Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

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Title: Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Author: Strong, Augustus Hopkins, 1836-1921
Language: English
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Systematic Theology

A Compendium and Commonplace-Book

Designed For The Use Of Theological Students

Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.

President and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological
Seminary

Revised and Enlarged

In Three Volumes

Volume 2

The Doctrine of Man

The Judson Press

Philadelphia

1907

CONTENTS

Part IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works of God. (Continued)
Chapter IV. The Works Of God; Or The Execution Of The Decrees.
Section I.—Creation.
I. Definition Of Creation.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Creation.
1. Direct Scripture Statements.
2. Indirect evidence from Scripture.
III. Theories which oppose Creation.
1. Dualism.
2. Emanation.
3. Creation from eternity.
4. Spontaneous generation.
IV. The Mosaic Account of Creation.
1. Its twofold nature,—as uniting the ideas of creation and of
development.
2. Its proper interpretation.
V. God’s End in Creation.
1. The testimony of Scripture.
2. The testimony of reason.
VI. Relation of the Doctrine of Creation to other Doctrines.
1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.
2. To the wisdom and free-will of God.
3. To Christ as the Revealer of God.
4. To Providence and Redemption.
5. To the Observance of the Sabbath.
Section II.—Preservation.
I. Definition of Preservation.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Preservation.
1. From Scripture.
2. From Reason.
III. Theories which virtually deny the doctrine of Preservation.
1. Deism.
2. Continuous Creation.
IV. Remarks upon the Divine Concurrence.
Section III.—Providence.
I. Definition of Providence.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Providence.
1. Scriptural Proof.
2. Rational proof.
III. Theories opposing the Doctrine of Providence.
1. Fatalism.
2. Casualism.
3. Theory of a merely general providence.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.
1. To miracles and works of grace.
2. To prayer and its answer.
3. To Christian activity.
4. To the evil acts of free agents.
Section IV.—Good And Evil Angels.
I. Scripture Statements and Imitations.
1. As to the nature and attributes of angels.
2. As to their number and organization.
3. As to their moral character.
4. As to their employments.
A. The employments of good angels.
B. The employments of evil angels.
II. Objections to the Doctrine of Angels.
1. To the doctrine of angels in general.
2. To the doctrine of evil angels in particular.
III. Practical uses of the Doctrine of Angels.
A. Uses of the doctrine of good angels.
B. Uses of the doctrine of evil angels.
Part V. Anthropology, Or The Doctrine Of Man.
Chapter I. Preliminary.
I. Man a Creation of God and a Child of God.
II. Unity of the Human Race.
1. The argument from history.
2. The argument from language.
3. The argument from psychology.
4. The argument from physiology.
III. Essential Elements of Human Nature.
1. The Dichotomous Theory.
2. The Trichotomous Theory.
IV. Origin of the Soul.
1. The Theory of Preëxistence.
2. The Creatian Theory.
3. The Traducian Theory.
V. The Moral Nature of Man.
1. Conscience.
2. Will.
Chapter II. The Original State Of Man.
I. Essentials of Man’s Original State.
1. Natural likeness to God, or personality.
2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.
A. The image of God as including only personality.
B. The image of God as consisting simply in man’s natural
capacity for religion.
II. Incidents of Man’s Original State.
1. Results of man’s possession of the divine image.
2. Concomitants of man’s possession of the divine image.
Chapter III. Sin, Or Man’s State Of Apostasy.
Section I.—The Law Of God.
I. Law in General.
II. The Law of God in Particular.
III. Relation of the Law to the Grace of God.
Section II.—Nature Of Sin.
I. Definition of Sin.
1. Proof.
2. Inferences.
II. The Essential Principle of Sin.
1. Sin as Sensuousness.
2. Sin as Finiteness.
3. Sin as Selfishness.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.
I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has
committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine
law.
II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses
a corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is
itself sin.
Section IV.—Origin Of Sin In The Personal Act Of Adam.
I. The Scriptural Account of the Temptation and Fall in Genesis
3:1-7.
1. Its general, character not mythical or allegorical, but
historical.
2. The course of the temptation, and the resulting fall.
II. Difficulties connected with the Fall considered as the
personal Act of Adam.
1. How could a holy being fall?
2. How could God justly permit Satanic temptation?
3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with
disobedience to so slight a command?
III. Consequences of the Fall, so far as respects Adam.
1. Death.
2. Positive and formal exclusion from God’s presence.
Section V.—Imputation Of Adam’s Sin To His Posterity.
I. Theories of Imputation.
1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man’s natural Innocence.
2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated
Depravity.
3. The New School Theory, or Theory of uncondemnable
Vitiosity.
4. The Federal Theory, or Theory of Condemnation by Covenant.
5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for
Depravity.
6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural
Headship.
II.—Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine of Imputation.
Section VI.—Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity.
I. Depravity.
1. Depravity partial or total?
2. Ability or inability?
II. Guilt.
1. Nature of guilt.
2. Degrees of guilt.
III. Penalty.
1. Idea of penalty.
2. The actual penalty of sin.
Section VII.—The Salvation Of Infants.
Part VI. Soteriology, Or The Doctrine Of Salvation Through The Work Of
Christ And Of The Holy Spirit.
Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ.
Section I.—Historical Preparation For Redemption.
I. Negative Preparation,—in the history of the heathen world.
II. Positive Preparation,—in the history of Israel.
Section II.—The Person Of Christ.
I. Historical Survey of Views Respecting the Person of Christ.
II. The two Natures of Christ,—their Reality and Integrity.
1. The Humanity of Christ.
2. The Deity of Christ.
III. The Union of the two Natures in one Person.
1. Proof of this Union.
2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.
3. The real nature of this Union.
Section III.—The Two States Of Christ.
I. The State of Humiliation.
1. The nature of this humiliation.
2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation.
II. The State of Exaltation.
1. The nature of this exaltation.
2. The stages of Christ’s exaltation.
Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.
I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.
1. The nature of Christ’s prophetic work.
2. The stages of Christ’s prophetic work.
II. The Priestly Office of Christ.
1. Christ’s Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the
Atonement.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.
B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found
in the Mosaic system.
C. Theories of the Atonement.
1st. The Socinian, or Example Theory of the Atonement.
2nd. The Bushnellian, or Moral Influence Theory of the
Atonement.
3d. The Grotian, or Governmental Theory of the
Atonement.
4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually
Extirpated Depravity.
5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the
Atonement.
6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
E. The Extent of the Atonement.
2. Christ’s Intercessory Work.
III. The Kingly Office of Christ.

[Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]

Christo Deo Salvatori.

“THE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF
SEEING.”—_Cicero._

“OPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY
LAW.”—_Psalm 119:18._

“FOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE
LIGHT.”—_Psalm 36:9._

“FOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS
PERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.”—_1 Cor. 13:9,
10._

PART IV. THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD. (CONTINUED)

Chapter IV. The Works Of God; Or The Execution Of The Decrees.

Section I.—Creation.

I. Definition Of Creation.

By creation we mean that free act of the triune God by which in the
beginning for his own glory he made, without the use of preëxisting
materials, the whole visible and invisible universe.

Creation is designed origination, by a transcendent and personal God, of
that which itself is not God. The universe is related to God as our own
volitions are related to ourselves. They are not ourselves, and we are
greater than they. Creation is not simply the idea of God, or even the
plan of God, but it is the idea externalized, the plan executed; in other
words, it implied an exercise, not only of intellect, but also of will,
and this will is not an instinctive and unconscious will, but a will that
is personal and free. Such exercise of will seems to involve, not
self-development, but self-limitation, on the part of God; the
transformation of energy into force, and so a beginning of time, with its
finite successions. But, whatever the relation of creation to time,
creation makes the universe wholly dependent upon God, as its originator.

F. H. Johnson, in Andover Rev., March, 1891:280, and What is
Reality, 285—“Creation is designed origination.... Men never could
have thought of God as the Creator of the world, were it not that
they had first known themselves as creators.” We agree with the
doctrine of Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause. Man creates ideas
and volitions, without use of preëxisting material. He also
indirectly, through these ideas and volitions, creates
brain-modifications. This creation, as Johnson has shown, is
without hands, yet elaborate, selective, progressive.
Schopenhauer: “Matter is nothing more than causation; its true
being is its action.”

Prof. C. L. Herrick, Denison Quarterly, 1896:248, and
Psychological Review, March, 1899, advocates what he calls
_dynamism_, which he regards as the only alternative to a
materialistic dualism which posits matter, and a God above and
distinct from matter. He claims that the predicate of reality can
apply only to energy. To speak of energy as _residing in_
something is to introduce an entirely incongruous concept, for it
continues our guest _ad infinitum_. “Force,” he says, “is energy
under resistance, or self-limited energy, for all parts of the
universe are derived from the energy. Energy manifesting itself
under self-conditioning or differential forms is force. The change
of pure energy into force is creation—the introduction of
resistance. The progressive complication of this interference is
evolution—a form of orderly resolution of energy. Substance is
pure spontaneous energy. God’s substance is his energy—the
infinite and inexhaustible store of spontaneity which makes up his
being. The form which self-limitation impresses upon substance, in
revealing it in force, is not God, because it no longer possesses
the attributes of spontaneity and universality, though it emanates
from him. When we speak of energy as self-limited, we simply imply
that spontaneity is intelligent. The sum of God’s acts is his
being. There is no _causa posterior_ or _extranea_, which spurs
him on. We must recognize in the source what appears in the
outcome. We can speak of _absolute_, but not of _infinite_ or
_immutable_, substance. The Universe is but the partial expression
of an infinite God.”

Our view of creation is so nearly that of Lotze, that we here
condense Ten Broeke’s statement of his philosophy: “Things are
concreted laws of action. If the idea of being must include
permanence as well as activity, we must say that only the personal
truly is. All else is flow and process. We can interpret ontology
only from the side of personality. Possibility of interaction
requires the dependence of the mutually related many of the system
upon an all-embracing, coördinating One. The finite is a mode or
phenomenon of the One Being. Mere things are only modes of
energizing of the One. Self-conscious personalities are created,
posited, and depend on the One in a different way. Interaction of
things is immanent action of the One, which the perceiving mind
interprets as causal. Real interaction is possible only between
the Infinite and the created finite, _i. e._, self-conscious
persons. The finite is not a part of the Infinite, nor does it
partly exhaust the stuff of the Infinite. The One, by an act of
freedom, posits the many, and the many have their ground and unity
in the Will and Thought of the One. Both the finite and the
Infinite are free and intelligent.

“Space is not an extra-mental reality, _sui generis_, nor an order
of relations among realities, but a form of dynamic appearance,
the ground of which is the fixed orderly changes in reality. So
time is the form of change, the subjective interpretation of
timeless yet successive changes in reality. So far as God is the
ground of the world-process, he is in time. So far as he
transcends the world-process in his self-conscious personality, he
is not in time. Motion too is the subjective interpretation of
changes in things, which changes are determined by the demands of
the world-system and the purpose being realized in it. Not
atomism, but dynamism, is the truth. Physical phenomena are
referable to the activity of the Infinite, which activity is given
a substantive character because we think under the form of
substance and attribute. Mechanism is compatible with teleology.
Mechanism is universal and is necessary to all system. But it is
limited by purpose, and by the possible appearance of any new law,
force, or act of freedom.

“The soul is not a function of material activities, but is a true
reality. The system is such that it can admit new factors, and the
soul is one of these possible new factors. The soul is created as
substantial reality, in contrast with other elements of the
system, which are only phenomenal manifestations of the One
Reality. The relation between soul and body is that of interaction
between the soul and the universe, the body being that part of the
universe which stands in closest relation with the soul (_versus_
Bradley, who holds that ‘body and soul alike are phenomenal
arrangements, neither one of which has any title to fact which is
not owned by the other’). Thought is a knowledge of reality. We
must assume an adjustment between subject and object. This
assumption is founded on the postulate of a morally perfect God.”
To Lotze, then, the only real creation is that of finite
personalities,—matter being only a mode of the divine activity.
See Lotze, Microcosmos, and Philosophy of Religion. Bowne, in his
Metaphysics and his Philosophy of Theism, is the best expositor of
Lotze’s system.

In further explanation of our definition we remark that

(_a_) Creation is not “production out of nothing,” as if “nothing” were a
substance out of which “something” could be formed.

We do not regard the doctrine of Creation as bound to the use of
the phrase “creation out of nothing,” and as standing or falling
with it. The phrase is a philosophical one, for which we have no
Scriptural warrant, and it is objectionable as intimating that
“nothing” can itself be an object of thought and a source of
being. The germ of truth intended to be conveyed in it can better
be expressed in the phrase “without use of preëxisting materials.”

(_b_) Creation is not a fashioning of preëxisting materials, nor an
emanation from the substance of Deity, but is a making of that to exist
which once did not exist, either in form or substance.

There is nothing divine in creation but the origination of
substance. Fashioning is competent to the creature also. Gassendi
said to Descartes that God’s creation, if he is the author of
forms but not of substances, is only that of the tailor who
clothes a man with his apparel. But substance is not necessarily
material. We are to conceive of it rather after the analogy of our
own ideas and volitions, and as a manifestation of spirit.
Creation is not simply the thought of God, nor even the plan of
God, but rather the externalization of that thought and the
execution of that plan. Nature is “a great sheet let down from God
out of heaven,” and containing “nothing that is common or
unclean;” but nature is not God nor a part of God, any more than
our ideas and volitions are ourselves or a part of ourselves.
Nature is a partial manifestation of God, but it does not exhaust
God.

(_c_) Creation is not an instinctive or necessary process of the divine
nature, but is the free act of a rational will, put forth for a definite
and sufficient end.

Creation is different in kind from that eternal process of the
divine nature in virtue of which we speak of generation and
procession. The Son is begotten of the Father, and is of the same
essence; the world is created without preëxisting material, is
different from God, and is made by God. Begetting is a necessary
act; creation is the act of God’s free grace. Begetting is
eternal, out of time; creation is in time, or with time.

Studia Biblica, 4:148—“Creation is the voluntary limitation which
God has imposed on himself.... It can only be regarded as a
Creation of free spirits.... It is a form of almighty power to
submit to limitation. Creation is not a development of God, but a
circumscription of God.... The world is not the expression of God,
or an emanation from God, but rather his self-limitation.”

(_d_) Creation is the act of the triune God, in the sense that all the
persons of the Trinity, themselves uncreated, have a part in it—the Father
as the originating, the Son as the mediating, the Spirit as the realizing
cause.

That all of God’s creative activity is exercised through Christ
has been sufficiently proved in our treatment of the Trinity and
of Christ’s deity as an element of that doctrine (see pages 310,
311). We may here refer to the texts which have been previously
considered, namely, _John 1:3, 4_—“_All things were made through
him, and without him was not anything made. That which hath been
made was life in him_”; _1 Cor. 8:6_—“_one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_all things have been
created through him, and unto him_”; _Heb. 1:10_—“_Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the
heavens are the works of thy hands._”

The work of the Holy Spirit seems to be that of completing,
bringing to perfection. We can understand this only by remembering
that our Christian knowledge and love are brought to their
consummation by the Holy Spirit, and that he is also the principle
of our natural self-consciousness, uniting subject and object in a
subject-object. If matter is conceived of as a manifestation of
spirit, after the idealistic philosophy, then the Holy Spirit may
be regarded as the perfecting and realizing agent in the
externalization of the divine ideas. While it was the Word though
whom all things were made, the Holy Spirit was the author of life,
order, and adornment. Creation is not a mere manufacturing,—it is
a spiritual act.

John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:120—“The creation
of the world cannot be by a Being who is external. Power
presupposes an object on which it is exerted. 129—There is in the
very nature of God a reason why he should reveal himself in, and
communicate himself to, a world of finite existences, or fulfil
and realize himself in the being and life of nature and man. His
nature would not be what it is if such a world did not exist;
something would be lacking to the completeness of the divine being
without it. 144—Even with respect to human thought or
intelligence, it is mind or spirit which creates the world. It is
not a ready-made world on which we look; in perceiving our world
we make it. 152-154—We make progress as we cease to think our own
thoughts and become media of the universal Intelligence.” While we
accept Caird’s idealistic interpretation of creation, we dissent
from his intimation that creation is a necessity to God. The
trinitarian being of God renders him sufficient to himself, even
without creation. Yet those very trinitarian relations throw light
upon the method of creation, since they disclose to us the order
of all the divine activity. On the definition of Creation, see
Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:11.

II. Proof of the Doctrine of Creation.

Creation is a truth of which mere science or reason cannot fully assure
us. Physical science can observe and record changes, but it knows nothing
of origins. Reason cannot absolutely disprove the eternity of matter. For
proof of the doctrine of Creation, therefore, we rely wholly upon
Scripture. Scripture supplements science, and renders its explanation of
the universe complete.

Drummond, in his Natural Law in the Spiritual World, claims that
atoms, as “manufactured articles,” and the dissipation of energy,
prove the creation of the visible from the invisible. See the same
doctrine propounded in “The Unseen Universe.” But Sir Charles
Lyell tells us: “Geology is the autobiography of the earth,—but
like all autobiographies, it does not go back to the beginning.”
Hopkins, Yale Lectures on the Scriptural View of Man: “There is
nothing _a priori_ against the eternity of matter.” Wardlaw, Syst.
Theol., 2:65—“We cannot form any distinct conception of creation
out of nothing. The very idea of it might never have occurred to
the mind of man, had it not been traditionally handed down as a
part of the original revelation to the parents of the race.”

Hartmann, the German philosopher, goes back to the original
elements of the universe, and then says that science stands
petrified before the question of their origin, as before a
Medusa’s head. But in the presence of problems, says Dorner, the
duty of science is not petrifaction, but solution. This is
peculiarly true, if science is, as Hartmann thinks, a complete
explanation of the universe. Since science, by her own
acknowledgment, furnishes no such explanation of the origin of
things, the Scripture revelation with regard to creation meets a
demand of human reason, by adding the one fact without which
science must forever be devoid of the highest unity and
rationality. For advocacy of the eternity of matter, see
Martineau, Essays, 1:157-169.

E. H. Johnson, in Andover Review, Nov. 1891:505 sq., and Dec.
1891:592 sq., remarks that evolution can be traced backward to
more and more simple elements, to matter without motion and with
no quality but being. Now make it still more simple by divesting
it of existence, and you get back to the necessity of a Creator.
An infinite number of past stages is impossible. There is no
infinite number. Somewhere there must be a beginning. We grant to
Dr. Johnson that the only alternative to creation is a
materialistic dualism, or an eternal matter which is the product
of the divine mind and will. The theories of dualism and of
creation from eternity we shall discuss hereafter.

1. Direct Scripture Statements.

A. Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” To
this it has been objected that the verb ברא does not necessarily denote
production without the use of preexisting materials (see Gen. 1:27 “God
created man in his own image”; _cf._ 2:7—“the Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground”; also Ps. 51:10—“Create in me a clean heart”).

“In the first two chapters of Genesis ברא is used (1) of the
creation of the universe (_1:1_); (2) of the creation of the great
sea monsters (_1:21_); (3) of the creation of man (_1:27_).
Everywhere else we read of God’s _making_, as from an already
created substance, the firmament (_1:7_), the sun, moon and stars
(_1:16_), the brute creation (_1:25_); or of his _forming_ the
beasts of the field out of the ground (_2:19_); or, lastly, of his
_building up_ into a woman the rib he had taken from man (_2:22_,
margin)”—quoted from Bible Com., 1:31. Guyot, Creation, 30—“_Bara_
is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the
three great spheres of existence—the world of matter, the world of
life, and the spiritual world represented by man.”

We grant, in reply, that the argument for absolute creation derived from
the mere word ברא is not entirely conclusive. Other considerations in
connection with the use of this word, however, seem to render this
interpretation of Gen. 1:1 the most plausible. Some of these
considerations we proceed to mention.

(_a_) While we acknowledge that the verb ברא “does not necessarily or
invariably denote production without the use of preëxisting materials, we
still maintain that it signifies the production of an effect for which no
natural antecedent existed before, and which can be only the result of
divine agency.” For this reason, in the Kal species it is used only of
God, and is never accompanied by any accusative denoting material.

No accusative denoting material follows _bara_, in the passages
indicated, for the reason that all thought of material was absent.
See Dillmann, Genesis, 18; Oehler, Theol. O. T., 1:177. The
quotation in the text above is from Green, Hebrew Chrestomathy,
67. But E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 88, remarks: “Whether
the Scriptures teach the absolute origination of matter—its
creation out of nothing—is an open question.... No decisive
evidence is furnished by the Hebrew word _bara_.”

A moderate and scholarly statement of the facts is furnished by
Professor W. J. Beecher, in S. S. Times, Dec. 23, 1893:807—“To
create is to originate divinely.... Creation, in the sense in
which the Bible uses the word, does not exclude the use of
materials previously existing; for man was taken from the ground
(_Gen. 2:7_), and woman was builded from the rib of a man
(_2:22_). Ordinarily God brings things into existence through the
operation of second causes. But it is possible, in our thinking,
to withdraw attention from the second causes, and to think of
anything as originating simply from God, apart from second causes.
To think of a thing thus is to think of it as created. The Bible
speaks of Israel as created, of the promised prosperity of
Jerusalem as created, of the Ammonite people and the king of Tyre
as created, of persons of any date in history as created (_Is.
43:1-15_; _65:18_; _Ez. 21:30_; _28:13, 15_; _Ps. 102:18_; _Eccl.
12:1_; _Mal. 2:10_). Miracles and the ultimate beginnings of
second causes are necessarily thought of as creative acts; all
other originating of things may be thought of, according to the
purpose we have in mind, either as creation or as effected by
second causes.”

(_b_) In the account of the creation, ברא seems to be distinguished from
עשה, “to make” either with or without the use of already existing material
(ברא לעשות, “created in making” or “made by creation,” in 2:3; and ויעש,
of the firmament, in 1:7), and from יצר, “to form” out of such material.
(See ויברא, of man regarded as a spiritual being, in 1:27; but ויצר, of
man regarded as a physical being, in 2:7.)

See Conant, Genesis, 1; Bible Com., 1:37—“ ‘created to make’ (in
_Gen. 2:3_) = created out of nothing, in order that he might make
out of it all the works recorded in the six days.” Over against
these texts, however, we must set others in which there appears no
accurate distinguishing of these words from one another. _Bara_ is
used in _Gen. 1:1_, _asah_ in _Gen. 2:4_, of the creation of the
heaven and earth. Of earth, both _yatzar_ and _asah_ are used in
_Is. 45:18_. In regard to man, in _Gen. 1:27_ we find _bara_; in
_Gen. 1:26_ and _9:6_, _asah_; and in _Gen. 2:7_, _yatzar_. In
_Is. 43:7_, all three are found in the same verse: “_whom I have_
_bara_ _for my glory, I have_ _yatzar_, _yea, I have_ _asah_
_him_.” In _Is. 45:12_, “_asah_ _the earth, and_ _bara_ _man upon
it_”; but in _Gen. 1:1_ we read: “_God_ _bara_ _the earth_,” and
in _9:6_ “_asah_ _man_.” _Is. 44:2—__“__the Lord that_ _asah_
_thee_ (_i. e._, man) and _yatzar_ _thee_”; but in _Gen. 1:27_,
God “_bara_ _man_.” _Gen. 5:2_—“_male and female_ _bara_ _he
them_.” _Gen. 2:22_—“_the rib_ _asah_ _he a woman_”; _Gen.
2:7_—“_he_ _yatzar_ _man_”; _i. e._, _bara_ male and female, yet
_asah_ the woman and _yatzar_ the man. _Asah_ is not always used
for _transform_: _Is. 41:20_—“_fir-tree, pine, box-tree_” in
nature—_bara_; _Ps. 51:10_—“_bara_ _in me a clean heart_”; _Is.
65:18_—God “_bara_ _Jerusalem into a rejoicing_.”

(_c_) The context shows that the meaning here is a making without the use
of preëxisting materials. Since the earth in its rude, unformed, chaotic
condition is still called “the earth” in verse 2, the word ברא in verse 1
cannot refer to any shaping or fashioning of the elements, but must
signify the calling of them into being.

Oehler, Theology of O.T., 1:177—“By the absolute _berashith_, ‘_in
the beginning_,’ the divine creation is fixed as an absolute
beginning, not as a working on something that already existed.”
_Verse 2_ cannot be the beginning of a history, for it begins with
“_and_.” Delitzsch says of the expression “_the earth was without
form and void_”: “From this it is evident that the void and
formless state of the earth was not uncreated or without a
beginning. ... It is evident that ‘_the heaven and earth_’ as God
created them in the beginning were not the well-ordered universe,
but the world in its elementary form.”

(_d_) The fact that ברא may have had an original signification of
“cutting,” “forming,” and that it retains this meaning in the Piel
conjugation, need not prejudice the conclusion thus reached, since terms
expressive of the most spiritual processes are derived from sensuous
roots. If ברא does not signify absolute creation, no word exists in the
Hebrew language that can express this idea.

(_e_) But this idea of production without the use of preëxisting materials
unquestionably existed among the Hebrews. The later Scriptures show that
it had become natural to the Hebrew mind. The possession of this idea by
the Hebrews, while it is either not found at all or is very dimly and
ambiguously expressed in the sacred books of the heathen, can be best
explained by supposing that it was derived from this early revelation in
Genesis.

E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 94—“_Rom. 4:17_ tells us
that the faith of Abraham, to whom God had promised a son, grasped
the fact that God calls into existence ‘_the things that are
not_.’ This may be accepted as Paul’s interpretation of the first
verse of the Bible.” It is possible that the heathen had
occasional glimpses of this truth, though with no such clearness
as that with which it was held in Israel. Perhaps we may say that
through the perversions of later nature-worship something of the
original revelation of absolute creation shines, as the first
writing of a palimpsest appears faintly through the subsequent
script with which it has been overlaid. If the doctrine of
absolute creation is found at all among the heathen, it is greatly
blurred and obscured. No one of the heathen books teaches it as do
the sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews. Yet it seems as if this “One
accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world has never lost.”

Bib. Com., 1:31—“Perhaps no other ancient language, however
refined and philosophical, could have so dearly distinguished the
different acts of the Maker of all things [as the Hebrew did With
its four different words], and that because all heathen philosophy
esteemed matter to be eternal and uncreated.” Prof. E. D. Burton:
“Brahmanism, and the original religion of which Zoroastrianism was
a reformation, were Eastern and Western divisions of a primitive
Aryan, and probably monotheistic, religion. The Vedas, which
represented the Brahmanism, leave it a question whence the world
came, whether from God by emanation, or by the shaping of material
eternally existent. Later Brahmanism is pantheistic, and Buddhism,
the Reformation of Brahmanism, is atheistic.” See Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:471, and Mosheim’s references in Cudworth’s Intellectual
System, 3:140.

We are inclined still to hold that the doctrine of absolute
creation was known to no other ancient nation besides the Hebrews.
Recent investigations, however, render this somewhat more doubtful
than it once seemed to be. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 142, 143,
finds creation among the early Babylonians. In his Religions of
Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 372-397, he says: “The elements of
Hebrew cosmology are all Babylonian; even the creative word itself
was a Babylonian conception; but the spirit which inspires the
cosmology is the antithesis to that which inspired the cosmology
of Babylonia. Between the polytheism of Babylonia and the
monotheism of Israel a gulf is fixed which cannot be spanned. So
soon as we have a clear monotheism, absolute creation is a
corollary. As the monotheistic idea is corrupted, creation gives
place to pantheistic transformation.”

It is now claimed by others that Zoroastrianism, the Vedas, and
the religion of the ancient Egyptians had the idea of absolute
creation. On creation in the Zoroastrian system, see our treatment
of Dualism, page 382. Vedic hymn in Rig Veda, 10:9, quoted by J.
F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2:205—“Originally this universe
was soul only; nothing else whatsoever existed, active or
inactive. He thought: ‘I will create worlds’; thus he created
these various worlds: earth, light, mortal being, and the waters.”
Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 216-222, speaks of a papyrus on the
staircase of the British Museum, which reads: “The great God, the
Lord of heaven and earth, who made all things which are ... the
almighty God, self-existent, who made heaven and earth; ... the
heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the earth; thou hast put
together the earth; ... who made all things, but was not made.”

But the Egyptian religion in its later development, as well as
Brahmanism, was pantheistic, and it is possible that all the
expressions we have quoted are to be interpreted, not as
indicating a belief in creation out of nothing, but as asserting
emanation, or the taking on by deity of new forms and modes of
existence. On creation in heathen systems, see Pierret,
Mythologie, and answer to it by Maspero; Hymn to Amen-Rha, in
“Records of the Past”; G. C. Müller, Literature of Greece, 87, 88;
George Smith, Chaldean Genesis, chapters 1, 3, 5 and 6; Dillmann,
Com. on Genesis, 6th edition, Introd., 5-10; LeNormant, Hist.
Ancienne de l’Orient, 1:17-26; 5:238; Otto Zöckler, art.:
Schöpfung, in Herzog and Plitt, Encyclop.; S. B. Gould, Origin and
Devel. of Relig. Beliefs, 281-292.

B. Hebrews 11:3—“By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed
by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things
which appear” = the world was not made out of sensible and preëxisting
material, but by the direct fiat of omnipotence (see Alford, and Lünemann,
Meyer’s Com. _in loco_).

Compare 2 Maccabees 7:28—ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ Θεός. This
the Vulgate translated by “quia ex nihilo fecit illa Deus,” and
from the Vulgate the phrase “creation out of nothing” is derived.
Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, points out that Wisdom 11:17 has ἐξ
ἀμόρφου ὕλης, interprets by this the ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων in 2 Maccabees,
and denies that this last refers to creation out of nothing. But
we must remember that the later Apocryphal writings were composed
under the influence of the Platonic philosophy; that the passage
in Wisdom may be a rationalistic interpretation of that in
Maccabees; and that even if it were independent, we are not to
assume a harmony of view in the Apocrypha. 2 Maccabees 7:28 must
stand by itself as a testimony to Jewish belief in creation
without use of preëxisting material,—belief which can be traced to
no other source than the Old Testament Scriptures. Compare _Ex.
34:10_—“_I will do marvels such as have not been wrought_ [marg.
“_created_”] _in all the earth_”; _Num. 16:30_—“_if Jehovah make a
new thing_” [marg. “_create a creation_”]; _Is. 4:5_—“_Jehovah
will create ... a cloud and smoke_”; _41:20_—“_the Holy One of
Israel hath created it_”; _45:7, 8_—“_I form the light, and create
darkness_”; _57:19_—“_I create the fruit of the lips_”;
_65:17_—“_I create new heavens and a new earth_”; _Jer.
31:22_—“_Jehovah hath created a new thing._”

_Rom. 4:17_—“_God, who giveth life to the dead, and calleth the
things that are not, as though they were_”; _1 Cor. 1:28_—“_things
that are not_” [did God choose] “_that he might bring to naught
the things that are_”; _2 Cor. 4:6_—“_God, that said, Light shall
shine out of darkness_”—created light without preëxisting
material,—for darkness is no material; _Col. 1:16, 17_—“_in him
were all things created ... and he is before all things_”; so also
_Ps. 33:9_—“_he spake, and it was done_”; _148:5_—“_he commanded,
and they were created._” See Philo, Creation of the World, chap.
1-7, and Life of Moses, book 3, chap. 36—“He produced the most
perfect work, the Cosmos, out of non-existence (τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) into
being (εἰς τὸ εἶναι).” E. H. Johnson, Syst. Theol., 94—“We have no
reason to believe that the Hebrew mind had the idea of creation
out of _invisible_ materials. But creation out of _visible_
materials is in _Hebrews 11:3_ expressly denied. This text is
therefore equivalent to an assertion that the universe was made
without the use of _any_ preëxisting materials.”

2. Indirect evidence from Scripture.

(_a_) The past duration of the world is limited; (_b_) before the world
began to be, each of the persons of the Godhead already existed; (_c_) the
origin of the universe is ascribed to God, and to each of the persons of
the Godhead. These representations of Scripture are not only most
consistent with the view that the universe was created by God without use
of preëxisting material, but they are inexplicable upon any other
hypothesis.

(_a_) _Mark 13:19_—“_from the beginning of the creation which God
created until now_”; _John 17:5_—“_before the world was_”; _Eph.
1:4_—“_before the foundation of the world._” (_b_) _Ps.
90:2_—“_Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou
hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to
everlasting thou art God_”; _Prov. 8:23_—“_I was set up from
everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was_”; _John
1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_he is before
all things_”; _Heb. 9:14_—“_the eternal Spirit_” (see Tholuck,
Com. _in loco_). (_c_) _Eph. 3:9_—“_God who created all things_”;
_Rom. 11:36_—“_of him ... are all things_”; _1 Cor. 8:6_—“_one
God, the Father, of whom we are all things ... one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things_”; _John 1:3_—“_all things
were made through him_”; _Col 1:16_—“_in him were all things
created ... all things have been created through him, and unto
him_”; _Heb. 1:2_—“_through whom also he made the worlds_”; _Gen.
1:2_—“_and the Spirit of God moved_ [marg. “_was brooding_”] _upon
the face of the waters._” From these passages we may also infer
that (1) all things are absolutely dependent upon God; (2) God
exercises supreme control over all things; (3) God is the only
infinite Being; (4) God alone is eternal; (5) there is no
substance out of which God creates; (6) things do not proceed from
God by necessary emanation; the universe has its source and
originator in God’s transcendent and personal will. See, on this
indirect proof of creation, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:231. Since
other views, however, have been held to be more rational, we
proceed to the examination of

III. Theories which oppose Creation.

1. Dualism.

Of dualism there are two forms:

A. That which holds to two self-existent principles, God and matter. These
are distinct from and coëternal with each other. Matter, however, is an
unconscious, negative, and imperfect substance, which is subordinate to
God and is made the instrument of his will. This was the underlying
principle of the Alexandrian Gnostics. It was essentially an attempt to
combine with Christianity the Platonic or Aristotelian conception of the
ὕλη. In this way it was thought to account for the existence of evil, and
to escape the difficulty of imagining a production without use of
preëxisting material. Basilides (flourished 125) and Valentinus (died
160), the representatives of this view, were influenced also by Hindu
philosophy, and their dualism is almost indistinguishable from pantheism.
A similar view has been held in modern times by John Stuart Mill and
apparently by Frederick W. Robertson.

Dualism seeks to show how the One becomes the many, how the
Absolute gives birth to the relative, how the Good can consist
with evil. The ὕλη of Plato seems to have meant nothing but empty
space, whose not-being, or merely negative existence, prevented
the full realization of the divine ideas. Aristotle regarded the
ὕλη as a more positive cause of imperfection,—it was like the hard
material which hampers the sculptor in expressing his thought. The
real problem for both Plato and Aristotle was to explain the
passage from pure spiritual existence to that which is phenomenal
and imperfect, from the absolute and unlimited to that which
exists in space and time. Finiteness, instead of being created,
was regarded as having eternal existence and as limiting all
divine manifestations. The ὕλη, from being a mere abstraction,
became either a negative or a positive source of evil. The
Alexandrian Jews, under the influence of Hellenic culture, sought
to make this dualism explain the doctrine of creation.

Basilides and Valentinus, however, were also under the influence
of a pantheistic philosophy brought in from the remote East—the
philosophy of Buddhism, which taught that the original Source of
all was a nameless Being, devoid of all qualities, and so,
indistinguishable from Nothing. From this Being, which is
Not-being, all existing things proceed. Aristotle and Hegel
similarly taught that pure Being = Nothing. But inasmuch as the
object of the Alexandrian philosophers was to show how something
could be originated, they were obliged to conceive of the
primitive Nothing as capable of such originating. They, moreover,
in the absence of any conception of absolute creation, were
compelled to conceive of a material which could be fashioned.
Hence the Void, the Abyss, is made to take the place of matter. If
it be said that they did not conceive of the Void or the Abyss as
substance, we reply that they gave it just as substantial
existence as they gave to the first Cause of things, which, in
spite of their negative descriptions of it, involved Will and
Design. And although they do not attribute to this secondary
substance a positive influence for evil, they notwithstanding see
in it the unconscious hinderer of all good.

Principal Tulloch, in Encyc. Brit., 10:704—“In the Alexandrian
Gnosis ... the stream of being in its ever outward flow at length
comes in contact with dead matter which thus receives animation
and becomes a living source of evil.” Windelband, Hist.
Philosophy, 129, 144, 239—“With Valentinus, side by side with the
Deity poured forth into the Pleroma or Fulness of spiritual forms,
appears the Void, likewise original and from eternity; beside Form
appears matter; beside the good appears the evil.” Mansel, Gnostic
Heresies, 139—“The Platonic theory of an inert, semi-existent
matter, ... was adopted by the Gnosis of Egypt.... 187—Valentinus
does not content himself, like Plato, ... with assuming as the
germ of the natural world an unformed matter existing from all
eternity.... The whole theory may be described as a development,
in allegorical language of the pantheistic hypothesis which in its
outline had been previously adopted by Basilides.” A. H. Newman,
Ch. History, 1:181-192, calls the philosophy of Basilides
“fundamentally pantheistic.” “Valentinus,” he says, “was not so
careful to insist on the original non-existence of God and
everything.” We reply that even to Basilides the Non-existent One
is endued with power; and this power accomplishes nothing until it
comes in contact with things non-existent, and out of them
fashions the seed of the world. The things non-existent are as
substantial as is the Fashioner, and they imply both objectivity
and limitation.

Lightfoot, Com. on Colossians, 76-113, esp. 82, has traced a
connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian
heresy, and the still earlier teaching of the Essenes of
Palestine. All these were characterized by (1) the spirit of caste
or intellectual exclusiveness; (2) peculiar tenets as to creation
and as to evil; (3) practical asceticism. Matter is evil and
separates man from God; hence intermediate beings between man and
God as objects of worship; hence also mortification of the body as
a means of purifying man from sin. Paul’s antidote for both errors
was simply the person of Christ, the true and only Mediator and
Sanctifier. See Guericke, Church History, 1:161.

Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 1:128—“The majority of Gnostic undertakings
may be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a
theosophy.... In Gnosticism the Hellenic spirit desired to make
itself master of Christianity, or more correctly, of the Christian
communities.”... 232—Harnack represents one of the fundamental
philosophic doctrines of Gnosticism to be that of the Cosmos as a
mixture of matter with divine sparks, which has arisen from a
descent of the latter into the former [Alexandrian Gnosticism],
or, as some say, from the perverse, or at least merely permitted
undertaking of a subordinate spirit [Syrian Gnosticism]. We may
compare the Hebrew Sadducee with the Greek Epicurean; the Pharisee
with the Stoic; the Essene with the Pythagorean. The Pharisees
overdid the idea of God’s transcendence. Angels must come in
between God and the world. Gnostic intermediaries were the logical
outcome. External works of obedience were alone valid. Christ
preached, instead of this, a religion of the heart. Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, 1:52—“The rejection of animal sacrifices and
consequent abstaining from temple-worship on the part of the
Essenes, which seems out of harmony with the rest of their legal
obedience, is most simply explained as the consequence of their
idea that to bring to God a bloody animal offering was derogatory
to his transcendental character. Therefore they interpreted the O.
T. command in an allegorizing way.”

Lyman Abbott: “The Oriental dreams; the Greek defines; the Hebrew
acts. All these influences met and intermingled at Alexandria.
Emanations were mediations between the absolute, unknowable,
all-containing God, and the personal, revealed and holy God of
Scripture. Asceticism was one result: matter is undivine,
therefore get rid of it. License was another result: matter is
undivine, therefore disregard it—there is no disease and there is
no sin—the modern doctrine of Christian Science.” Kedney,
Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373; 2:354, conceives of the divine
glory as an eternal material environment of God, out of which the
universe is fashioned.

The author of “The Unseen Universe” (page 17) wrongly calls John
Stuart Mill a Manichæan. But Mill disclaims belief in the
_personality_ of this principle that resists and limits God,—see
his posthumous Essays on Religion, 176-195. F. W. Robertson,
Lectures on Genesis, 4-16—“Before the creation of the world all
was chaos ... but with the creation, order began.... God did not
cease from creation, for creation is going on every day. Nature is
God at work. Only after surprising changes, as in spring-time, do
we say figuratively, ‘God rests.’ ” See also Frothingham,
Christian Philosophy.

With regard to this view, we remark:

(_a_) The maxim _ex nihilo nihil fit_, upon which it rests, is true only
in so far as it asserts that no event takes place without a cause. It is
false, if it mean that nothing can ever be made except out of material
previously existing. The maxim is therefore applicable only to the realm
of second causes, and does not bar the creative power of the great first
Cause. The doctrine of creation does not dispense with a cause; on the
other hand, it assigns to the universe a sufficient cause in God.

Lucretius: “Nihil posse creari De nihilo, neque quod genitum est
ad nihil revocari.” Persius: “Gigni De nihilo nihil, in nihilum
nil posse reverti.” Martensen, Dogmatics, 116—“The nothing, out of
which God creates the world, is the eternal possibilities of his
will, which are the sources of all the actualities of the world.”
Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 2:292—“When therefore it is
argued that the creation of something from nothing is unthinkable
and is therefore peremptorily to be rejected, the argument seems
to me to be defective. The process is thinkable, but not
imaginable, conceivable but not probable.” See Cudworth,
Intellectual System, 3:81 _sq._ Lipsius, Dogmatik, 288, remarks
that the theory of dualism is quite as difficult as that of
absolute creation. It holds to a point of time when God began to
fashion preëxisting material, and can give no reason why God did
not do it before, since there must always have been in him an
impulse toward this fashioning.

(_b_) Although creation without the use of preëxisting material is
inconceivable, in the sense of being unpicturable to the imagination, yet
the eternity of matter is equally inconceivable. For creation without
preëxisting material, moreover, we find remote analogies in our own
creation of ideas and volitions, a fact as inexplicable as God’s bringing
of new substances into being.

Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 371, 372—“We have to a certain extent
an aid to the thought of absolute creation in our own free
volition, which, as absolutely originating and determining, may be
taken as the type to us of the creative act.” We speak of “the
creative faculty” of the artist or poet. We cannot give reality to
the products of our imaginations, as God can to his. But if
thought were only substance, the analogy would be complete. Shedd,
Dogm. Theol., 1:467—“Our thoughts and volitions are created ex
nihilo, in the sense that one thought is not made out of another
thought, nor one volition out of another volition.” So created
substance may be only the mind and will of God in exercise,
automatically in matter, freely in the case of free beings (see
pages 90, 105-110, 383, and in our treatment of Preservation).

Beddoes: “I have a bit of _Fiat_ in my soul, And can myself create
my little world.” Mark Hopkins: “Man is an image of God as a
creator.... He can purposely create, or cause to be, a future
that, but for him, would not have been.” E. C. Stedman, Nature of
Poetry, 223—“So far as the Poet, the artist, is creative, he
becomes a sharer of the divine imagination and power, and even of
the divine responsibility.” Wordsworth calls the poet a “serene
creator of immortal things.” Imagination, he says, is but another
name for “clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason in her
most exalted mood.” “If we are ‘_gods_’ (_Ps. 82:6_), that part of
the Infinite which is embodied in us must partake to a limited
extent of his power to create.” Veitch, Knowing and Being,
289—“Will, the expression of personality, both as originating
resolutions and moulding existing material into form, is the
nearest approach in thought which we can make to divine creation.”

Creation is not simply the thought of God,—it is also the will of
God—thought in expression, reason externalized. Will is creation
out of nothing, in the sense that there is no use of preëxisting
material. In man’s exercise of the creative imagination there is
will, as well as intellect. Royce, Studies of Good and Evil, 256,
points out that we can be original in (1) the style or form of our
work; (2) in the selection of the objects we imitate; (3) in the
invention of relatively novel combinations of material. Style,
subject, combination, then, comprise the methods of our
originality. Our new conceptions of nature as the expression of
the divine mind and will bring creation more within our
comprehension than did the old conception of the world as
substance capable of existing apart from God. Hudson, Law of
Psychic Phenomena, 294, thinks that we have power to create
visible phantasms, or embodied thoughts, that can be subjectively
perceived by others. See also Hudson’s Scientific Demonstration of
Future Life, 153. He defines genius as the result of the
synchronous action of the objective and subjective faculties.
Jesus of Nazareth, in his judgment, was a wonderful psychic.
Intuitive perception and objective reason were with him always in
the ascendant. His miracles were misinterpreted psychic phenomena.
Jesus never claimed that his works were outside of natural law.
All men have the same intuitional power, though in differing
degrees.

We may add that the begetting of a child by man is the giving of
substantial existence to another. Christ’s creation of man may be
like his own begetting by the Father. Behrends: “The relation
between God and the universe is more intimate and organic than
that between an artist and his work. The marble figure is
independent of the sculptor the moment it is completed. It
remains, though he die. But the universe would vanish in the
withdrawal of the divine presence and indwelling. If I were to use
any figure, it would be that of generation. The immanence of God
is the secret of natural permanence and uniformity. Creation is
primarily a spiritual act. The universe is not what we see and
handle. The real universe is an empire of energies, a hierarchy of
correlated forces, whose reality and unity are rooted in the
rational will of God perpetually active in preservation. But there
is no identity of substance, nor is there any division of the
divine substance.”

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 36—“A mind is conceivable
which should create its objects outright by pure self-activity and
without dependence on anything beyond itself. Such is our
conception of the Creator’s relation to his objects. But this is
not the case with us except to a very slight extent. Our mental
life itself begins, and we come only gradually to a knowledge of
things, and of ourselves. In some sense our objects are given;
that is, we cannot have objects at will or vary their properties
at our pleasure. In this sense we are passive in knowledge, and no
idealism can remove this fact. But in some sense also our objects
are our own products; for an existing object becomes an object for
us only as we think it, and thus make it our object. In this
sense, knowledge is an active process, and not a passive reception
of readymade information from without.” Clarke, Self and the
Father, 38—“Are we humiliated by having data for our imaginations
to work upon? by being unable to create material? Not unless it be
a shame to be second to the Creator.” Causation is as mysterious
as Creation. Balzac lived with his characters as actual beings. On
the Creative Principle, see N. R. Wood, The Witness of Sin,
114-135.

(_c_) It is unphilosophical to postulate two eternal substances, when one
self-existent Cause of all things will account for the facts. (_d_) It
contradicts our fundamental notion of God as absolute sovereign to suppose
the existence of any other substance to be independent of his will. (_e_)
This second substance with which God must of necessity work, since it is,
according to the theory, inherently evil and the source of evil, not only
limits God’s power, but destroys his blessedness. (_f_) This theory does
not answer its purpose of accounting for moral evil, unless it be also
assumed that spirit is material,—in which case dualism gives place to
materialism.

Martensen, Dogmatics, 121—“God becomes a mere demiurge, if nature
existed before spirit. That spirit only who in a perfect sense is
able to commence his work of creation can have power to complete
it.” If God does not create, he must use what material he finds,
and this working with intractable material must be his perpetual
sorrow. Such limitation in the power of the deity seemed to John
Stuart Mill the best explanation of the existing imperfections of
the universe.

The other form of dualism is:

B. That which holds to the eternal existence of two antagonistic spirits,
one evil and the other good. In this view, matter is not a negative and
imperfect substance which nevertheless has self-existence, but is either
the work or the instrument of a personal and positively malignant
intelligence, who wages war against all good. This was the view of the
Manichæans. Manichæanism is a compound of Christianity and the Persian
doctrine of two eternal and opposite intelligences. Zoroaster, however,
held matter to be pure, and to be the creation of the good Being. Mani
apparently regarded matter as captive to the evil spirit, if not
absolutely his creation.

The old story of Mani’s travels in Greece is wholly a mistake.
Guericke, Church History, 1:185-187, maintains that Manichæanism
contains no mixture of Platonic philosophy, has no connection with
Judaism, and as a sect came into no direct relations with the
Catholic church. Harnoch, Wegweiser, 22, calls Manichæanism a
compound of Gnosticism and Parseeism. Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Mani und die Manichäer, regards Manichæanism as the fruit, acme,
and completion of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a heresy in the
church; Manichæanism, like New Platonism, was an anti-church. J.
P. Lange: “These opposing theories represent various pagan
conceptions of the world, which, after the manner of palimpsests,
show through Christianity.” Isaac Taylor speaks of “the creator of
the carnivora”; and some modern Christians practically regard
Satan as a second and equal God.

On the Religion of Zoroaster, see Haug, Essays on Parsees,
139-161, 302-309; also our quotations on pp. 347-349; Monier
Williams, in 19th Century, Jan. 1881:155-177—Ahura Mazda was the
creator of the universe. Matter was created by him, and was
neither identified with him nor an emanation from him. In the
divine nature there were two opposite, but not opposing,
principles or forces, called “twins”—the one constructive, the
other destructive; the one beneficent, the other maleficent.
Zoroaster called these “twins” also by the name of “spirits,” and
declared that “these two spirits created, the one the reality, the
other the non-reality.” Williams says that these two principles
were conflicting only in name. The only antagonism was between the
resulting good and evil brought about by the free agent, man. See
Jackson, Zoroaster.

We may add that in later times this personification of principles
in the deity seems to have become a definite belief in two
opposing personal spirits, and that Mani, Manes, or Manichæus
adopted this feature of Parseeism, with the addition of certain
Christian elements. Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:470—“The
doctrine of the Manichæans was that creation was the work of
Satan.” See also Gieseler, Church History, 1:203; Neander, Church
History, 1:478-505; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.:
Dualism; and especially Baur, Das manichäische Religionssystem. A.
H. Newman, Ch. History, 1:194—“Manichæism is Gnosticism, with its
Christian elements reduced to a minimum, and the Zoroastrian, old
Babylonian, and other Oriental elements raised to the maximum.
Manichæism is Oriental dualism under Christian names, the
Christian names employed retaining scarcely a trace of their
proper meaning. The most fundamental thing in Manichæism is its
absolute dualism. The kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness
with their rulers stand eternally opposed to each other.”

Of this view we need only say that it is refuted (_a_) by all the
arguments for the unity, omnipotence, sovereignty, and blessedness of God;
(_b_) by the Scripture representations of the prince of evil as the
creature of God and as subject to God’s control.

Scripture passages showing that Satan is God’s creature or subject
are the following: _Col. 1:16_—“_for in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers_”; _cf._ _Eph. 6:12_—“_our wrestling is not against
flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places_”; _2 Pet.
2:4_—“_God spared not the angels when they sinned, but cast them
down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be
reserved unto judgment_”; _Rev. 20:2_—“_laid hold on the dragon,
the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan_”; _10_—“_and the
devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone._”

The closest analogy to Manichæan dualism is found in the popular
conception of the devil held by the mediæval Roman church. It is a
question whether he was regarded as a rival or as a servant of
God. Matheson, Messages of Old Religions, says that Parseeism
recognizes an obstructive element in the nature of God himself.
Moral evil is reality, and there is that element of truth in
Parseeism. But there is no reconciliation, nor is it shown that
all things work together for good. E. H. Johnson: “This theory
sets up matter as a sort of deity, a senseless idol endowed with
the truly divine attribute of self-existence. But we can
acknowledge but one God. To erect matter into an eternal Thing,
independent of the Almighty but forever beside him, is the most
revolting of all theories.” Tennyson, Unpublished Poem (Life,
1:314)—“Oh me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser God
had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would Till
the high God behold it from beyond, And enter it and make it
beautiful?”

E. G. Robinson: “Evil is not eternal; if it were, we should be
paying our respects to it.... There is much Manichæanism in modern
piety. We would influence soul through the body. Hence
sacramentarianism and penance. Puritanism is theological
Manichæanism. Christ recommended fasting because it belonged to
his age. Christianity came from Judaism. Churchism comes largely
from reproducing what Christ did. Christianity is not perfunctory
in its practices. We are to fast only when there is good reason
for it.” L. H. Mills, New World, March, 1895:51, suggests that
Phariseeism may be the same with Farseeism, which is but another
name for Parseeism. He thinks that Resurrection, Immortality,
Paradise, Satan, Judgment, Hell, came from Persian sources, and
gradually drove out the old Sadduceean simplicity. Pfleiderer,
Philos, Religion, 1:206—“According to the Persian legend, the
first human pair was a good creation of the all-wise Spirit,
Ahura, who had breathed into them his own breath. But soon the
primeval men allowed themselves to be seduced by the hostile
Spirit Angromainyu into lying and idolatry, whereby the evil
spirits obtained power over them and the earth and spoiled the
good creation.”

Disselhoff, Die klassische Poesie und die göttliche Offenbarung,
13-25—“The Gathas of Zoroaster are the first poems of humanity. In
them man rouses himself to assert his superiority to nature and
the spirituality of God. God is not identified with nature. The
impersonal nature-gods are vain idols and are causes of
corruption. Their worshippers are servants of falsehood.
Ahura-Mazda (living-wise) is a moral and spiritual personality.
Ahriman is equally eternal but not equally powerful. Good has not
complete victory over evil. Dualism is admitted and unity is lost.
The conflict of faiths leads to separation. While one portion of
the race remains in the Iranian highlands to maintain man’s
freedom and independence of nature, another portion goes
South-East to the luxuriant banks of the Ganges to serve the
deified forces of nature. The East stands for unity, as the West
for duality. Yet Zoroaster in the Gathas is almost deified; and
his religion, which begins by giving predominance to the good
Spirit, ends by being honey-combed with nature-worship.”

2. Emanation.

This theory holds that the universe is of the same substance with God, and
is the product of successive evolutions from his being. This was the view
of the Syrian Gnostics. Their system was an attempt to interpret
Christianity in the forms of Oriental theosophy. A similar doctrine was
taught, in the last century, by Swedenborg.

We object to it on the following grounds: (_a_) It virtually denies the
infinity and transcendence of God,—by applying to him a principle of
evolution, growth, and progress which belongs only to the finite and
imperfect. (_b_) It contradicts the divine holiness,—since man, who by the
theory is of the substance of God, is nevertheless morally evil. (_c_) It
leads logically to pantheism,—since the claim that human personality is
illusory cannot be maintained without also surrendering belief in the
personality of God.

Saturninus of Antioch, Bardesanes of Edessa, Tatian of Assyria,
Marcion of Sinope, all of the second century, were representatives
of this view. Blunt, Dict. of Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.:
Emanation: “The divine operation was symbolized by the image of
the rays of light proceeding from the sun, which were most intense
when nearest to the luminous substance of the body of which they
formed a part, but which decreased in intensity as they receded
from their source, until at last they disappeared altogether in
darkness. So the spiritual effulgence of the Supreme Mind formed a
world of spirit, the intensity of which varied inversely with its
distance from its source, until at length it vanished in matter.
Hence there is a chain of ever expanding Æons which are increasing
attenuations of his substance and the sum of which constitutes his
fulness, _i. e._, the complete revelation of his hidden being.”
Emanation, from _e_, and _manare_, to flow forth. Guericke, Church
History, 1:160—“many flames from one light ... the direct contrary
to the doctrine of creation from nothing.” Neander, Church
History, 1:372-74. The doctrine of emanation is distinctly
materialistic. We hold, on the contrary, that the universe is an
expression of God, but not an emanation from God.

On the difference between Oriental emanation and eternal
generation, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:470, and History Doctrine,
1:11-18, 318, note—“1. That which is eternally generated is
infinite, not finite; it is a divine and eternal person who is not
the world or any portion of it. In the Oriental schemes, emanation
is a mode of accounting for the origin of the finite. But eternal
generation still leaves the finite to be originated. The begetting
of the Son is the generation of an infinite person who afterwards
creates the finite universe _de nihilo_. 2. Eternal generation has
for its result a subsistence or personal hypostasis totally
distinct from the world; but emanation In relation to the deity
yields only an impersonal or at most a personified energy or
effluence which is one of the powers or principles of nature—a
mere _anima mundi_.” The truths of which emanation was the
perversion and caricature were therefore the generation of the Son
and the procession of the Spirit.

Principal Tulloch, in Encyc. Brit., 10:704—“All the Gnostics agree
in regarding this world as not proceeding immediately from the
Supreme Being.... The Supreme Being is regarded as wholly
inconceivable and indescribable—as the unfathomable Abyss
(Valentinus)—the Unnameable (Basilides). From this transcendent
source existence springs by emanation in a series of spiritual
powers.... The passage from the higher spiritual world to the
lower material one is, on the one hand, apprehended as a mere
continued degeneracy from the Source of Life, at length
terminating in the kingdom of darkness and death—the bordering
chaos surrounding the kingdom of light. On the other hand the
passage is apprehended in a more precisely dualistic form, as a
positive invasion of the kingdom of light by a self-existent
kingdom of darkness. According as Gnosticism adopted one or other
of these modes of explaining the existence of the present world,
it fell into the two great divisions which, from their places of
origin, have received the respective names of the Alexandrian and
Syrian Gnosis. The one, as we have seen, presents more a Western,
the other more an Eastern type of speculation. The dualistic
element in the one case scarcely appears beneath the pantheistic,
and bears resemblance to the Platonic notion of the ὕλη, a mere
blank necessity, a limitless void. In the other case, the
dualistic element is clear and prominent, corresponding to the
Zarathustrian doctrine of an active principle of evil as well as
of good—of a kingdom of Ahriman, as well as a kingdom of Ormuzd.
In the Syrian Gnosis ... there appears from the first a hostile
principle of evil in collision with the good.”

We must remember that dualism is an attempt to substitute for the
doctrine of absolute creation, a theory that matter and evil are
due to something negative or positive outside of God. Dualism is a
theory of origins, not of results. Keeping this in mind, we may
call the Alexandrian Gnostics dualists, while we regard emanation
as the characteristic teaching of the Syrian Gnostics. These
latter made matter to be only an efflux from God and evil only a
degenerate form of good. If the Syrians held the world to be
independent of God, this independence was conceived of only as a
later result or product, not as an original fact. Some like
Saturninus and Bardesanes verged toward Manichæan doctrine; others
like Tatian and Marcion toward Egyptian dualism; but all held to
emanation as the philosophical explanation of what the Scriptures
call creation. These remarks will serve as qualification and
criticism of the opinions which we proceed to quote.

Sheldon, Ch. Hist., 1:206—“The Syrians were in general more
dualistic than the Alexandrians. Some, after the fashion of the
Hindu pantheists, regarded the material realm as the region of
emptiness and illusion, the void opposite of the Pleroma, that
world of spiritual reality and fulness; others assigned a more
positive nature to the material, and regarded it as capable of an
evil aggressiveness even apart from any quickening by the incoming
of life from above.” Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, 139—“Like
Saturninus, Bardesanes is said to have combined the doctrine of
the malignity of matter with that of an active principle of evil;
and he connected together these two usually antagonistic theories
by maintaining that the inert matter was co-eternal with God,
while Satan as the active principle of evil was produced from
matter (or, according to another statement, co-eternal with it),
and acted in conjunction with it. 142—The feature which is usually
selected as characteristic of the Syrian Gnosis is the doctrine of
dualism; that is to say, the assumption of the existence of two
active and independent principles, the one of good, the other of
evil. This assumption was distinctly held by Saturninus and
Bardesanes ... in contradistinction to the Platonic theory of an
inert semi-existent matter, which was adopted by the Gnosis of
Egypt. The former principle found its logical development in the
next century in Manichæaism; the latter leads with almost equal
certainty to Pantheism.”

A. H. Newman, Ch. History, 1:192—“Marcion did not speculate as to
the origin of evil. The Demiurge and his kingdom are apparently
regarded as existing from eternity. Matter he regarded as
intrinsically evil, and he practised a rigid asceticism.” Mansel,
Gnostic Heresies, 210—“Marcion did not, with the majority of the
Gnostics, regard the Demiurge as a derived and dependent being,
whose imperfection is due to his remoteness from the highest
Cause; nor yet, according to the Persian doctrine, did he assume
an eternal principle of pure malignity. His second principle is
independent of and co-eternal with, the first; opposed to it
however, not as evil to good, but as imperfection to perfection,
or, as Marcion expressed it, as a just to a good being.
218—Non-recognition of any principle of pure evil. Three
principles only: the Supreme God, the Demiurge, and the eternal
Matter, the two latter being imperfect but not necessarily evil.
Some of the Marcionites seem to have added an evil spirit as a
fourth principle.... Marcion is the least Gnostic of all the
Gnostics.... 31—The Indian influence may be seen in Egypt, the
Persian in Syria.... 32—To Platonism, modified by Judaism,
Gnosticism owed much of its philosophical form and tendencies. To
the dualism of the Persian religion it owed one form at least of
its speculations on the origin and remedy of evil, and many of the
details of its doctrine of emanations. To the Buddhism of India,
modified again probably by Platonism, it was indebted for the
doctrines of the antagonism between spirit and matter and the
unreality of derived existence (the germ of the Gnostic Docetism),
and in part at least for the theory which regards the universe as
a series of successive emanations from the absolute Unity.”

Emanation holds that some stuff has proceeded from the nature of
God, and that God has formed this stuff into the universe. But
matter is not composed of stuff at all. It is merely an activity
of God. Origen held that ψυχή etymologically denotes a being
which, struck off from God the central source of light and warmth,
has cooled in its love for the good, but still has the possibility
of returning to its spiritual origin. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of
Religion, 2:271, thus describes Origen’s view: “As our body, while
consisting of many members, is yet an organism which is held
together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an
immense living being, which is held together by one soul, the
power and the Logos of God.” Palmer, Theol. Definition, 63,
note—“The evil of Emanationism is seen in the history of
Gnosticism. An emanation is a portion of the divine essence
regarded as separated from it and sent forth as independent.
Having no perpetual bond of connection with the divine, it either
sinks into degradation, as Basilides taught, or becomes actively
hostile to the divine, as the Ophites believed.... In like manner
the Deists of a later time came to regard the laws of nature as
having an independent existence, _i. e._, as emanations.”

John Milton, Christian Doctrine, holds this view. Matter is an
efflux from God himself, not intrinsically bad, and incapable of
annihilation. Finite existence is an emanation from God’s
substance, and God has loosened his hold on those living portions
or centres of finite existence which he has endowed with free
will, so that these independent beings may originate actions not
morally referable to himself. This doctrine of free will relieves
Milton from the charge of pantheism; see Masson, Life of Milton,
6:824-826. Lotze, Philos. Religion, xlviii, li, distinguishes
creation from emanation by saying that creation necessitates a
divine Will, while emanation flows by natural consequence from the
being of God. God’s motive in creation is love, which urges him to
communicate his holiness to other beings. God creates individual
finite spirits, and then permits the thought, which at first was
only his, to become the thought of these other spirits. This
transference of his thought by will is the creation of the world.
F. W. Farrar, on _Heb. 1:2_—“The word _Æon_ was used by the
Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at
once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and
the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the
Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘_The Word became flesh_’ (_John
1:14_).”

Upton, Hibbert Lectures, chap. 2—“In the very making of souls of
his own essence and substance, and in the vacating of his own
causality in order that men may be free, God already dies in order
that they may live. God withdraws himself from our wills, so as to
make possible free choice and even possible opposition to himself.
Individualism admits dualism but not complete division. Our
dualism holds still to underground connections of life between man
and man, man and nature, man and God. Even the physical creation
is ethical at heart: each thing is dependent on other things, and
must serve them, or lose its own life and beauty. The branch must
abide in the vine, or it withers and is cut off and burned” (275).

Swedenborg held to emanation,—see Divine Love and Wisdom, 283,
303, 905—“Every one who thinks from clear reason sees that the
universe is not created from nothing.... All things were created
out of a substance.... As God alone is substance in itself and
therefore the real _esse_, it is evidence that the existence of
things is from no other source.... Yet the created universe is not
God, because God is not in time and space.... There is a creation
of the universe, and of all things therein, by continual
mediations from the First.... In the substances and matters of
which the earths consist, there is nothing of the Divine in
itself, but they are deprived of all that is divine in itself....
Still they have brought with them by continuation from the
substance of the spiritual sum that which was there from the
Divine.” Swedenborgianism is “materialism driven deep and clinched
on the inside.” This system reverses the Lord’s prayer; it should
read: “As on earth, so in heaven.” He disliked certain sects, and
he found that all who belonged to those sects were in the hells,
condemned to everlasting punishment. The truth is not
materialistic emanation, as Swedenborg imagined, but rather divine
energizing in space and time. The universe is God’s system of
graded self-limitation, from matter up to mind. It has had a
beginning, and God has instituted it. It is a finite and partial
manifestation of the infinite Spirit. Matter is an expression of
spirit, but not an emanation from spirit, any more than our
thoughts and volitions are. Finite spirits, on the other hand, are
differentiations within the being of God himself, and so are not
emanations from him.

Napoleon asked Goethe what matter was. “_Esprit gelé_,”—frozen
spirit was the answer Schelling wished Goethe had given him. But
neither is matter spirit, nor are matter and spirit together mere
natural effluxes from God’s substance. A divine institution of
them is requisite (quoted substantially from Dorner, System of
Doctrine, 2:40). Schlegel in a similar manner called architecture
“frozen music,” and another writer calls music “dissolved
architecture.” There is a “psychical automatism,” as Ladd says, in
his Philosophy of Mind, 169; and Hegel calls nature “the corpse of
the understanding—spirit to alienation from itself.” But spirit is
the Adam, of which nature is the Eve; and man says to nature:
“_This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh_,” as Adam did
in _Gen. 2:23_.

3. Creation from eternity.

This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was
propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen,
Martineau, John Caird, Knight, and Pfleiderer. The necessity of supposing
such creation from eternity has been argued from God’s omnipotence, God’s
timelessness, God’s immutability, and God’s love. We consider each of
these arguments in their order.

Origen held that God was from eternity the creator of the world of
spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the
maxims: “Without the world God is not God.... God created the
world to satisfy a want in himself.... He cannot but constitute
himself the Father of spirits.” Schiller, Die Freundschaft, last
stanza, gives the following popular expression to this view:
“Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister; Fühlte Mangel, darum
schuf er Geister, Sel’ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das
höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des ganzen
Geisterreiches Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.” The poet’s thought
was perhaps suggested by Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther: “The flight
of a bird above my head inspired me with the desire of being
transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to
quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the
infinite.” Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 31—“But I need now as
then, Thee, God, who mouldest men. And since, not even when the
whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors
rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, To slake thy thirst.” But this
regards the Creator as dependent upon, and in bondage to, his own
world.

Pythagoras held that nature’s substances and laws are eternal.
Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:144; 2:250, seems to make the
creation of the world an eternal process, conceiving of it as a
self-sundering of the Deity, in whom in some way the world was
always contained (Schurman, Belief in God, 140). Knight, Studies
in Philos. and Lit., 94, quotes from Byron’s Cain, I:1—“Let him
Sit on his vast and solitary throne, Creating worlds, to make
eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence And
unparticipated solitude.... He, so wretched in his height, So
restless in his wretchedness, must still Create and recreate.”
Byron puts these words into the mouth of Lucifer. Yet Knight, in
his Essays in Philosophy, 143, 247, regards the universe as the
everlasting effect of an eternal Cause. Dualism, he thinks, is
involved in the very notion of a search for God.

W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“God is the source of the
universe. Whether by immediate production at some point of time,
so that after he had existed alone there came by his act to be a
universe, or by perpetual production from his own spiritual being,
so that his eternal existence was always accompanied by a universe
in some stage of being, God has brought the universe into
existence.... Any method in which the independent God could
produce a universe which without him could have had no existence,
is accordant with the teachings of Scripture. Many find it easier
philosophically to hold that God has eternally brought forth
creation from himself, so that there has never been a time when
there was not a universe in some stage of existence, than to think
of an instantaneous creation of all existing things when there had
been nothing but God before. Between these two views theology is
not compelled to decide, provided we believe that God is a free
Spirit greater than the universe.” We dissent from this conclusion
of Dr. Clarke, and hold that Scripture requires us to trace the
universe back to a beginning, while reason itself is better
satisfied with this view than it can be with the theory of
creation from eternity.

(_a_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s omnipotence.
Omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only
power to create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing
begun. Creation from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which
is self-contradictory is not an object of power.

The argument rests upon a misconception of eternity, regarding it
as a prolongation of time into the endless past. We have seen in
our discussion of eternity as an attribute of God, that eternity
is not endless time, or time without beginning, but rather
superiority to the law of time. Since eternity is no more past
than it is present, the idea of creation from eternity is an
irrational one. We must distinguish _creation in eternity past_ (=
God and the world coëternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he
is the begetter of the Son) from _continuous creation_ (which is
an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is
this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the
doctrine of Preservation, pages 415, 416). Birks, Difficulties of
Belief, 81, 82—“Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity
cannot be actually traversed any more than we can reach the bound
of an eternity to come. There was no _time_ before creation,
because there was no _succession_.”

Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of
Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is
nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct
from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a
beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can
be known of God or the origin of things.” Veitch, Knowing and
Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied
of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction
of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has
been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw
philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is;
the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being
the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the
one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it
is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and
marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”

(_b_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s timelessness.
Because God is free from the law of time it does not follow that creation
is free from that law. Rather is it true that no eternal creation is
conceivable, since this involves an infinite number. Time must have had a
beginning, and since the universe and time are coëxistent, creation could
not have been from eternity.

_Jude 25_—“_Before all time_”—implies that time had a beginning,
and _Eph. 1:4_—“_before the foundation of the world_”—implies that
creation itself had a beginning. Is creation infinite? No, says
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:459, because to a perfect creation unity
is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and
there can be no organism without a definite number of parts. For a
similar reason Dorner, System Doctrine, 2:28, denies that the
universe can be eternal. Granting on the one hand that the world
though eternal might be dependent upon God and as soon as the plan
was evolved there might be no reason why the execution should be
delayed, yet on the other hand the absolutely limitless is the
imperfect and no universe with an infinite number of parts is
conceivable or possible. So Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin,
1:220-225—“What has a goal or end must have a beginning; history,
as teleological, implies creation.”

Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its
existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the
will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his
nature.... The word ‘creation’ ought not to be used to designate a
deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his
will.” So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the
eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the
externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as
modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for
themselves.” On this view that God is the Ground but not the
Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion,
23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action”
in which both Lotze and Schurman believe. “To deny that divine
power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of
existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.” No one
can prove that “it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”
or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or
externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no
more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe
originating in time.

(_c_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s immutability.
His immutability requires, not an eternal creation, but only an eternal
plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the
possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation,
these too would need to be eternal.

We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution.
Much of God’s plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its
execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its
execution. But the beginning of the execution of God’s plan is
creation. Active will is an element in creation. God’s will is not
always active. He waits for “_the fulness of the time_” (_Gal.
4:4_) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ’s
earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the
universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity
usually interpret _Gen. 1:1_—“_In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth,_” and _John 1:1_—“_In the beginning was the
Word,_” as both and alike meaning “in eternity.” But neither of
these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back
to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was
its author and that the Word already was.

(_d_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s love. Creation
is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of
God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior
to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.

Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason,
and Power of God, God can “_reconcile all things to himself_” in
Christ (_Col. 1:20_). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού
τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is
immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of
God as _revealing_ himself in Christ, the idea of creation as an
eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan
without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of
the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized
by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ
which antedate the world (_Eph. 1:4_). The doctrine of the
Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of
such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A
beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not
thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and
resting in God, which would equalize God’s being with the
changeable course of human life. Nor could it be conceived what
should have hindered God from creating the world up to the
beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena,
that the divine creating is equally eternal with God’s being.”

(_e_) Creation from eternity, moreover, is inconsistent with the divine
independence and personality. Since God’s power and love are infinite, a
creation that satisfied them must be infinite in extent as well as eternal
in past duration—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus
dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God
existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance
from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance
with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.

Gore, Incarnation, 136, 137—“Christian theology is the harmony of
pantheism and deism.... It enjoys all the riches of pantheism
without its inherent weakness on the moral side, without making
God dependent on the world, as the world is dependent on God. On
the other hand, Christianity converts an unintelligible deism into
a rational theism. It can explain how God became a creator in
time, because it knows how creation has its eternal analogue in
the uncreated nature; it was God’s nature eternally to produce, to
communicate itself, to live.” In other words, it can explain how
God can be eternally alive, independent, self-sufficient, since he
is Trinity. Creation from eternity is a natural and logical
outgrowth of Unitarian tendencies in theology. It is of a piece
with the Stoic monism of which we read in Hatch, Hibbert Lectures,
177—“Stoic monism conceived of the world as a self-evolution of
God. Into such a conception the idea of a beginning does not
necessarily enter. It is consistent with the idea of an eternal
process of differentiation. That which is always has been under
changed and changing forms. The theory is cosmological rather than
cosmogonical. It rather explains the world as it is, than gives an
account of its origin.”

4. Spontaneous generation.

This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process
still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper
conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic
forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that

(_a_) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all
known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from
inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present
teach us, the law of nature is “omne vivum e vivo,” or “ex ovo.”

Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3:814-818—on
Monogeny or Thaumatogeny; quoted in Argyle, Reign of Law, 281—“We
discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or
coming-to-be of new plants and animals.” So Bastian, Modes of
Origin of Lowest Organisms, Beginnings of Life, and articles on
Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in Nature, 2:170, 193,
219, 410, 431. See Huxley’s Address before the British
Association, and Reply to Bastian, in Nature, 2:400, 473; also
Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay
Sermons, 142. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with
Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm or Life, Matter, and
Mind, 73-75.

In favor of Redi’s maxim, “omne vivum e vivo,” see Huxley, in
Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there
is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis
does take place or has taken place within the period during which
the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man,
1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the
question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern
writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous
generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the
infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.” On the
Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
Religion, 39-57.

(_b_) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing
as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an
impossibility of accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except
upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of
matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if
anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.

Sully: “Every doctrine of evolution must assume some definite
initial arrangement which is supposed to contain the possibilities
of the order which we find to be evolved and no other
possibility.” Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 258—“If no creative fiat
can be believed to create something out of nothing, still less is
evolution able to perform such a contradiction.” As we can get
morality only out of a moral germ, so we can get vitality only out
of a vital germ. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 14—“By brooding
long enough on an egg that is next to nothing, you can in this way
hatch any universe actual or possible. Is it not evident that this
is a mere trick of imagination, concealing its thefts of causation
by committing them little by little, and taking the heap from the
divine storehouse grain by grain?”

Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all
life-cells, whether animal or vegetable. “Omnis cellula e cellula,
sed primaria cellula ex organismo.” God created first the tree,
and its seed was in it when created (_Gen. 1:12_). Protoplasm is
not _proton_, but _deuteron_; the elements are antecedent to it.
It is not true that man was never made at all but only “growed”
like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of
Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the
world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic
postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational
order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our
conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is:
Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to
mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the
unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”

(_c_) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of
original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate
and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces
originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to
any valuable end without guidance of the same intelligence which initiated
it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of
spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as
supplementing the divine fiat which first called the elements into being.

There is such a thing as free will, and free will does not, like
the deterministic will, run in a groove. If there be free will in
man, then much more is there free will in God, and God’s will does
not run in a groove. God is not bound by law or to law. Wisdom
does not imply monotony or uniformity. God can do a thing once
that is never done again. Circumstances are never twice alike.
Here is the basis not only of creation but of new creation,
including miracle, incarnation, resurrection, regeneration,
redemption. Though will both in God and in man is for the most
part automatic and acts according to law, yet the power of new
beginnings, of creative action, resides in will, wherever it is
free, and this free will chiefly makes God to be God and man to be
man. Without it life would be hardly worth the living, for it
would be only the life of the brute. All schemes of evolution
which ignore this freedom of God are pantheistic in their
tendencies, for they practically deny both God’s transcendence and
his personality.

Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation
because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In
our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of
evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces
for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a
method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent.
Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God.
If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only
God’s way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology,
91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a
creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of
beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the
processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its
teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should
set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the
lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and
order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal
life a plastic power.”

Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say
that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a
mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism....
With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness
is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to
interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural
selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account
for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a
psychical something endowed with feelings and will, _i. e._, Life
and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition.
149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no
empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the
greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself
intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it.
274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not God
_and_ mechanism, but God _only_ and no mechanism. 283—Naturalism
and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of
Spiritualistic Monism.” Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in
psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the
non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the
unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”

IV. The Mosaic Account of Creation.

1. Its twofold nature,—as uniting the ideas of creation and of
development.

(_a_) Creation is asserted.—The Mosaic narrative avoids the error of
making the universe eternal or the result of an eternal process. The
cosmogony of Genesis, unlike the cosmogonies of the heathen, is prefaced
by the originating act of God, and is supplemented by successive
manifestations of creative power in the introduction of brute and of human
life.

All nature-worship, whether it take the form of ancient polytheism
or modern materialism, looks upon the universe only as a birth or
growth. This view has a basis of truth, inasmuch as it regards
natural forces as having a real existence. It is false in
regarding these forces as needing no originator or upholder.
Hesiod taught that in the beginning was formless matter. Genesis
does not begin thus. God is not a demiurge, working on eternal
matter. God antedates matter. He is the creator of matter at the
first (_Gen. 1:1_—_bara_) and he subsequently created animal life
(_Gen. 1:21_—“_and God created_”—_bara_) and the life of man
(_Gen. 1:27_—“_and God create man_”—_bara_ again).

Many statements of the doctrine of evolution err by regarding it
as an eternal or self-originated process. But the process requires
an originator, and the forces require an upholder. Each forward
step implies increment of energy, and progress toward a rational
end implies intelligence and foresight in the governing power.
Schurman says well that Darwinism explains the _survival_ of the
fittest, but cannot explain the _arrival_ of the fittest.
Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 34—“A primitive chaos of
star-dust which held in its womb not only the cosmos that fills
space, not only the living creatures that teem upon it, but also
the intellect that interprets it, the will that confronts it, and
the conscience that transfigures it, must as certainly have God at
the centre, as a universe mechanically arranged and periodically
adjusted must have him at the circumference.... There is no real
antagonism between creation and evolution. 59—Natural causation is
the expression of a supernatural Mind in nature, and man—a being
at once of sensibility and of rational and moral self-activity—is
a signal and ever-present example of the interfusion of the
natural with the supernatural in that part of universal existence
nearest and best known to us.”

Seebohm, quoted in J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom,
76—“When we admit that Darwin’s argument in favor of the theory of
evolution proves its truth, we doubt whether natural selection can
be in any sense the _cause_ of the origin of species. It has
probably played an important part in the history of evolution; its
rôle has been that of increasing the rapidity with which the
process of development has proceeded. Of itself it has probably
been powerless to originate a species; the machinery by which
species have been evolved has been completely independent of
natural selection and could have produced all the results which we
call the evolution of species without its aid; though the process
would have been slow had there been no struggle of life to
increase its pace.” New World, June, 1896:237-262, art. by Howison
on the Limits of Evolution, finds limits in (1) the noumenal
Reality; (2) the break between the organic and the inorganic; (3)
break between physiological and logical genesis; (4) inability to
explain the great fact on which its own movement rests; (5) the _a
priori_ self-consciousness which is the essential being and true
person of the mind.

Evolution, according to Herbert Spencer, is “an integration of
matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the
matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a
definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained
motion goes through a parallel transformation.” D. W. Simon
criticizes this definition as defective “because (1) it omits all
mention both of energy and its differentiations; and (2) because
it introduces into the definition of the process one of the
phenomena thereof, namely, motion. As a matter of fact, both
energy or force, and law, are subsequently and illicitly
introduced as distinct factors of the process; they ought
therefore to have found recognition in the definition or
description.” Mark Hopkins, Life, 189—“God: what need of him? Have
we not force, uniform force, and do not all things continue as
they were from the beginning of the creation, if it ever had a
beginning? Have we not the τὸ πᾶν, the universal All, the Soul of
the universe, working itself up from unconsciousness through
molecules and maggots and mice and marmots and monkeys to its
highest culmination in man?”

(_b_) Development is recognized.—The Mosaic account represents the present
order of things as the result, not simply of original creation, but also
of subsequent arrangement and development. A fashioning of inorganic
materials is described, and also a use of these materials in providing the
conditions of organized existence. Life is described as reproducing
itself, after its first introduction, according to its own laws and by
virtue of its own inner energy.

Martensen wrongly asserts that “Judaism represented the world
exclusively as _creatura_, not _natura_; as κτίσις, not φύσις.”
This is not true. Creation is represented as the bringing forth,
not of something dead, but of something living and capable of
self-development. Creation lays the foundation for cosmogony. Not
only is there a fashioning and arrangement of the material which
the original creative act has brought into being (see Gen. 1:2, 4,
6, 7, 9, 16, 17; 2:2, 6, 7, 8—Spirit brooding; dividing light from
darkness, and waters from waters; dry land appearing; setting
apart of sun, moon, and stars; mist watering; forming man’s body;
planting garden) but there is also an imparting and using of the
productive powers of the things and beings created (_Gen. 1:12,
22, 24, 28_—earth brought forth grass; trees yielding fruit whose
seed was in itself; earth brought forth the living creatures; man
commanded to be fruitful and multiply).

The tendency at present among men of science is to regard the
whole history of life upon the planet as the result of evolution,
thus excluding creation, both at the beginning of the history and
along its course. On the progress from the Orohippus, the lowest
member of the equine series, an animal with four toes, to
Anchitherium with three, then to Hipparion, and finally to our
common horse, see Huxley, in Nature for May 11, 1873:33, 34. He
argues that, if a complicated animal like the horse has arisen by
gradual modification of a lower and less specialized form, there
is no reason to think that other animals have arisen in a
different way. Clarence King, Address at Yale College, 1877,
regards American geology as teaching the doctrine of sudden yet
natural modification of species. “When catastrophic change burst
in upon the ages of uniformity and sounded in the ear of every
living thing the words: ‘Change or die!’ plasticity became the
sole principle of action.” Nature proceeded then by leaps, and
corresponding to the leaps of geology we find leaps of biology.

We grant the probability that the great majority of what we call
species were produced in some such ways. If science should render
it certain that all the present species of living creatures were
derived by natural descent from a few original germs, and that
these germs were themselves an evolution of inorganic forces and
materials, we should not therefore regard the Mosaic account as
proved untrue. We should only be required to revise our
interpretation of the word _bara_ in _Gen. 1:21, 27_, and to give
it there the meaning of mediate creation, or creation by law. Such
a meaning might almost seem to be favored by _Gen. 1:11_—“_let the
earth put forth grass_”; _20_—“_let the waters bring forth
abundantly __ the moving creature that hath life_”; _2:7_—“_the
Lord God formed man of the dust_”; _9_—“_out of the ground made
the Lord God to grow every tree_”; _cf._ _Mark 4:28_—αὐτομάτη ἣ γή
καρποφορεῖ—“_the earth brings forth fruit automatically_.” Goethe,
Sprüche in Reimen: “Was wär ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse? Ihm ziemt’s die Welt im
Innern zu bewegen, Sich in Natur, Natur in sich zu hegen, So dass,
was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen
Geist vermisst”—“No, such a God my worship may not win, Who lets
the world about his finger spin, A thing eternal; God must dwell
within.”

All the growth of a tree takes place in from four to six weeks in
May, June and July. The addition of woody fibre between the bark
and the trunk results, not by impartation into it of a new force
from without, but by the awakening of the life within. Environment
changes and growth begins. We may even speak of an immanent
transcendence of God—an unexhausted vitality which at times makes
great movements forward. This is what the ancients were trying to
express when they said that trees were inhabited by dryads and so
groaned and bled when wounded. God’s life is in all. In evolution
we cannot say, with LeConte, that the higher form of energy is
“derived from the lower.” Rather let us say that both the higher
and the lower are constantly dependent for their being on the will
of God. The lower is only God’s preparation for his higher
self-manifestation; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 165, 166.

Even Haeckel, Hist. Creation, 1:38, can say that in the Mosaic
narrative “two great and fundamental ideas meet us—the idea of
separation or differentiation, and the idea of progressive
development or perfecting. We can bestow our just and sincere
admiration on the Jewish lawgiver’s grand insight into nature, and
his simple and natural hypothesis of creation, without discovering
in it a divine revelation.” Henry Drummond, whose first book,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, he himself in his later days
regretted as tending in a deterministic and materialistic
direction, came to believe rather in “spiritual law in the natural
world.” His Ascent of Man regards evolution and law as only the
methods of a present Deity. Darwinism seemed at first to show that
the past history of life upon the planet was a history of
heartless and cruel slaughter. The survival of the fittest had for
its obverse side the destruction of myriads. Nature was “red in
tooth and claw with ravine.” But further thought has shown that
this gloomy view results from a partial induction of facts.
Palæontological life was not only a struggle for life, but a
struggle for the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to
be seen in the instinct of reproduction and in the care of
offspring. In every lion’s den and tiger’s lair, in every
mother-eagle’s feeding of her young, there is a self-sacrifice
which faintly shadows forth man’s subordination of personal
interests to the interests of others.

Dr. George Harris, in his Moral Evolution, has added to Drummond’s
doctrine the further consideration that the struggle for one’s own
life has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of
others. The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of
right, righteousness, justice and law upon earth. Every creature
owes it to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an
adumbration of morality even in the predatory and internecine
warfare of the geologic ages. The immanent God was even then
preparing the way for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of
humanity. B. P. Bowne, in the Independent, April 19, 1900—“The
Copernican system made men dizzy for a time, and they held on to
the Ptolemaic system to escape vertigo. In like manner the
conception of God, as revealing himself in a great historic
movement and process, in the consciences and lives of holy men, in
the unfolding life of the church, makes dizzy the believer in a
dictated book, and he longs for some fixed word that shall be sure
and stedfast.” God is not limited to creating from without: he can
also create from within; and development is as much a part of
creation as is the origination of the elements. For further
discussion of man’s origin, see section on Man a Creation of God,
in our treatment of Anthropology.

2. Its proper interpretation.

We adopt neither (_a_) the allegorical, or mythical, (_b_) the
hyperliteral, nor (_c_) the hyperscientific interpretation of the Mosaic
narrative; but rather (_d_) the pictorial-summary interpretation,—which
holds that the account is a rough sketch of the history of creation, true
in all its essential features, but presented in a graphic form suited to
the common mind and to earlier as well as to later ages. While conveying
to primitive man as accurate an idea of God’s work as man was able to
comprehend, the revelation was yet given in pregnant language, so that it
could expand to all the ascertained results of subsequent physical
research. This general correspondence of the narrative with the teachings
of science, and its power to adapt itself to every advance in human
knowledge, differences it from every other cosmogony current among men.

(_a_) The _allegorical_, or _mythical interpretation_, represents
the Mosaic account as embodying, like the Indian and Greek
cosmogonies, the poetic speculations of an early race as to the
origin of the present system. We object to this interpretation
upon the ground that the narrative of creation is inseparably
connected with the succeeding history, and is therefore most
naturally regarded as itself historical. This connection of the
narrative of creation with the subsequent history, moreover,
prevents us from believing it to be the description of a vision
granted to Moses. It is more probably the record of an original
revelation to the first man, handed down to Moses’ time, and used
by Moses as a proper introduction to his history.

We object also to the view of some higher critics that the book of
Genesis contains two inconsistent stories. Marcus Dods, Book of
Genesis, 2—“The compiler of this book ... lays side by side two
accounts of man’s creation which no ingenuity can reconcile.”
Charles A. Briggs: “The doctrine of creation in Genesis 1 is
altogether different from that taught in Genesis 2.” W. N. Clarke,
Christian Theology, 199-201—“It has been commonly assumed that the
two are parallel, and tell one and the same story; but examination
shows that this is not the case.... We have here the record of a
tradition, rather than a revelation.... It cannot be taken as
literal history, and it does not tell by divine authority how man
was created.” To these utterances we reply that the two accounts
are not inconsistent but complementary, the first chapter of
Genesis describing man’s creation as the crown of God’s general
work, the second describing man’s creation with greater
particularity as the beginning of human history.

Canon Rawlinson, in Aids to Faith, 275, compares the Mosaic
account with the cosmogony of Berosus, the Chaldean. Pfleiderer,
Philos. of Religion, 1:267-272, gives an account of heathen
theories of the origin of the universe. Anaxagoras was the first
who represented the chaotic first matter as formed through the
ordering understanding (νοῦς) of God, and Aristotle for that
reason called him “the first sober one among many drunken.”
Schurman, Belief in God, 138—“In these cosmogonies the world and
the gods grow up together; cosmogony is, at the same time,
theogony.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The Bible writers believed and
intended to state that the world was made in three literal days.
But, on the principle that God may have meant more than they did,
the doctrine of periods may not be inconsistent with their
account.” For comparison of the Biblical with heathen cosmogonies,
see Blackie in Theol. Eclectic, 1:77-87; Guyot, Creation, 58-63;
Pope, Theology, 1:401, 402; Bible Commentary, 1:36, 48; McIlvaine,
Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 1-54; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions,
2:193-221. For the theory of “prophetic vision,” see Kurtz, Hist.
of Old Covenant, Introd., i-xxxvii, civ-cxxx; and Hugh Miller,
Testimony of the Rocks, 179-210; Hastings, Dict. Bible, art.:
Cosmogony; Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia,
372-397.

(_b_) The _hyperliteral interpretation_ would withdraw the
narrative from all comparison with the conclusions of science, by
putting the ages of geological history between the first and
second verses of _Gen. 1_, and by making the remainder of the
chapter an account of the fitting up of the earth, or of some
limited portion of it, in six days of twenty-four hours each.
Among the advocates of this view, now generally discarded, are
Chalmers, Natural Theology, Works, 1:228-258, and John Pye Smith,
Mosaic Account of Creation, and Scripture and Geology. To this
view we object that there is no indication, in the Mosaic
narrative, of so vast an interval between the first and the second
verses; that there is no indication, in the geological history, of
any such break between the ages of preparation and the present
time (see Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, 141-178); and that
there are indications in the Mosaic record itself that the word
“_day_” is not used in its literal sense; while the other
Scriptures unquestionably employ it to designate a period of
indefinite duration (_Gen. 1:5_—“_God called the light Day_”—a day
before there was a sun; _8_—“_there was evening and there was
morning, a second day_”; _2:2_—God “_rested on the seventh day_”;
_cf._ _Heb. 4:3-10_—where God’s day of rest seems to continue, and
his people are exhorted to enter into it; _Gen. 2:4_—“_the day
that Jehovah made earth and heaven_”—“_day_” here covers all the
seven days; _cf._ _Is. 2:12_—“_a day of Jehovah of hosts_”; _Zech.
14:7_—“_it shall be one day which is known unto Jehovah; not day,
and not night_”; _2 Pet. 3:8_—“_one day is with the Lord as __ a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day_”). Guyot,
Creation, 34, objects also to this interpretation, that the
narrative purports to give a history of the making of the heavens
as well as of the earth (_Gen. 2:4_—“_these are the generations of
the heaven and of the earth_”), whereas this interpretation
confines the history to the earth. On the meaning of the word
“_day_,” as a period of indefinite duration, see Dana, Manual of
Geology, 744; LeConte, Religion and Science, 262.

(_c_) The _hyperscientific interpretation_ would find in the
narrative a minute and precise correspondence with the geological
record. This is not to be expected, since it is foreign to the
purpose of revelation to teach science. Although a general concord
between the Mosaic and geological histories may be pointed out, it
is a needless embarrassment to compel ourselves to find in every
detail of the former an accurate statement of some scientific
fact. Far more probable we hold to be

(_d_) The _pictorial-summary interpretation_. Before explaining
this in detail, we would premise that we do not hold this or any
future scheme of reconciling Genesis and geology to be a finality.
Such a settlement of all the questions involved would presuppose
not only a perfected science of the physical universe, but also a
perfected science of hermeneutics. It is enough if we can offer
tentative solutions which represent the present state of thought
upon the subject. Remembering, then, that any such scheme of
reconciliation may speedily be outgrown without prejudice to the
truth of the Scripture narrative, we present the following as an
approximate account of the coincidences between the Mosaic and the
geological records. The scheme here given is a combination of the
conclusions of Dana and Guyot, and assumes the substantial truth
of the nebular hypothesis. It is interesting to observe that
Augustine, who knew nothing of modern science, should have
reached, by simple study of the text, some of the same results.
See his Confessions, 12:8—“First God created a chaotic matter,
which was _next_ to _nothing_. This chaotic matter was made from
nothing, before all days. Then this chaotic, amorphous matter was
subsequently arranged, in the succeeding six days”; De Genes. ad
Lit., 4:27—“The length of these days is not to be determined by
the length of our week-days. There is a series in both cases, and
that is all.” We proceed now to the scheme:

1. The earth, if originally in the condition of a gaseous fluid,
must have been void and formless as described in _Genesis 1:2_.
Here the earth is not yet separated from the condensing nebula,
and its fluid condition is indicated by the term “_waters_.”

2. The beginning of activity in matter would manifest itself by
the production of light, since light is a resultant of molecular
activity. This corresponds to the statement in _verse 3_. As the
result of condensation, the nebula becomes luminous, and this
process from darkness to light is described as follows: “_there
was evening and there was morning, one day_.” Here we have a day
without a sun—a feature in the narrative quite consistent with two
facts of science: first, that the nebula would naturally be
self-luminous, and, secondly, that the earth proper, which reached
its present form before the sun, would, when it was thrown off, be
itself a self-luminous and molten mass. The day was therefore
continuous—day without night.

3. The development of the earth into an independent sphere and its
separation from the fluid around it answers to the dividing of
“_the waters under the firmament from the waters above_,” in
_verse 7_. Here the word “_waters_” is used to designate the
“primordial cosmic material” (Guyot, Creation, 35-37), or the
molten mass of earth and sun united, from which the earth is
thrown off. The term “_waters_” is the best which the Hebrew
language affords to express this idea of a fluid mass. _Ps. 148_
seems to have this meaning, where it speaks of the “_waters that
are above the heavens_” (_verse 4_)—waters which are distinguished
from the “_deeps_” below (_verse 7_), and the “_vapor_” above
(_verse 8_).

4. The production of the earth’s physical features by the partial
condensation of the vapors which enveloped the igneous sphere, and
by the consequent outlining of the continents and oceans, is next
described in _verse 9_ as the gathering of the waters into one
place and the appearing of the dry land.

5. The expression of the idea of life in the lowest plants, since
it was in type and effect the creation of the vegetable kingdom,
is next described in _verse 11_ as a bringing into existence of
the characteristic forms of that kingdom. This precedes all
mention of animal life, since the vegetable kingdom is the natural
basis of the animal. If it be said that our earliest fossils are
animal, we reply that the earliest vegetable forms, the _algæ_,
were easily dissolved, and might as easily disappear; that
graphite and bog-iron ore, appearing lower down than any animal
remains, are the result of preceding vegetation; that animal
forms, whenever and wherever existing, must subsist upon and
presuppose the vegetable. The Eozoön is of necessity preceded by
the Eophyte. If it be said that fruit-trees could not have been
created on the third day, we reply that since the creation of the
vegetable kingdom was to be described at one stroke and no mention
of it was to be made subsequently, this is the proper place to
introduce it and to mention its main characteristic forms. See
Bible Commentary, 1:36; LeConte, Elements of Geology, 136, 285.

6. The vapors which have hitherto shrouded the planet are now
cleared away as preliminary to the introduction of life in its
higher animal forms. The consequent appearance of solar light is
described in _verses 16_ and _17_ as a making of the sun, moon,
and stars, and a giving of them as luminaries to the earth.
Compare _Gen. 9:13_—“_I do set my bow in the cloud._” As the
rainbow had existed in nature before, but was now appointed to
serve a peculiar purpose, so in the record of creation sun, moon
and stars, which existed before, were appointed as visible lights
for the earth,—and that for the reason that the earth was no
longer self-luminous, and the light of the sun struggling through
the earth’s encompassing clouds was not sufficient for the higher
forms of life which were to come.

7. The exhibition of the four grand types of the animal kingdom
(radiate, molluscan, articulate, vertebrate), which characterizes
the next stage of geological progress, is represented in _verses
20_ and _21_ as a creation of the lower animals—those that swarm
in the waters, and the creeping and flying species of the land.
Huxley, in his American Addresses, objects to this assigning of
the origin of birds to the fifth day, and declares that
terrestrial animals exist in lower strata than any form of
bird,—birds appearing only in the Oölitic, or New Red Sandstone.
But we reply that the fifth day is devoted to sea-productions,
while land-productions belong to the sixth. Birds, according to
the latest science, are sea-productions, not land-productions.
They originated from Saurians, and were, at the first, flying
lizards. There being but one mention of sea-productions, all
these, birds included, are crowded into the fifth day. Thus
Genesis anticipates the latest science. On the ancestry of birds,
see Pop. Science Monthly, March, 1884:606; Baptist Magazine,
1877:505.

8. The introduction of mammals—viviparous species, which are
eminent above all other vertebrates for a quality prophetic of a
high moral purpose, that of suckling their young—is indicated in
_verses 24_ and _25_ by the creation, on the sixth day, of cattle
and beasts of prey.

9. Man, the first being of moral and intellectual qualities, and
the first in whom the unity of the great design has full
expression, forms in both the Mosaic and geologic record the last
step of progress in creation (see _verses 26-31_). With Prof.
Dana, we may say that “in this succession we observe not merely an
order of events like that deduced from science; there is a system
in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which
philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.” See Dana,
Manual of Geology, 741-746, and Bib. Sac., April, 1885:201-224.
Richard Owen: “Man from the beginning of organisms was ideally
present upon the earth”; see Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, 3:796;
Louis Agassiz: “Man is the purpose toward which the whole animal
creation tends from the first appearance of the first palæozoic
fish.”

Prof. John M. Taylor: “Man is not merely a mortal but a moral
being. If he sinks below this plane of life he misses the path
marked out for him by all his past development. In order to
progress, the higher vertebrate had to subordinate everything to
mental development. In order to become human it had to develop the
rational intelligence. In order to become higher man, present man
must subordinate everything to moral development. This is the
great law of animal and human development clearly revealed in the
sequence of physical and psychical functions.” W. E. Gladstone in
S. S. Times, April 26, 1890, calls the Mosaic days “chapters in
the history of creation.” He objects to calling them epochs or
periods, because they are not of equal length, and they sometimes
overlap. But he defends the general correspondence of the Mosaic
narrative with the latest conclusions of science, and remarks:
“Any man whose labor and duty for several scores of years has
included as their central point the study of the means of making
himself intelligible to the mass of men, is in a far better
position to judge what would be the forms and methods of speech
proper for the Mosaic writer to adopt, than the most perfect
Hebraist as such, or the most consummate votary of physical
science as such.”

On the whole subject, see Guyot, Creation; Review of Guyot, in N.
Eng., July, 1884:591-594; Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation;
Thompson, Man in Genesis and in Geology; Agassiz, in Atlantic
Monthly, Jan. 1874; Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man, 82, and in
Expositor, Apl. 1886; LeConte, Science and Religion, 264; Hill, in
Bib. Sac., April, 1875; Peirce, Ideality in the Physical Sciences,
38-72; Boardman, The Creative Week; Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T.,
65-138; Bell, in Nature, Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1882; W. E.
Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1885:685-707, Jan. 1886:1,
176; reply by Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1885, and Feb.
1886; Schmid, Theories of Darwin; Bartlett, Sources of History in
the Pentateuch, 1-35; Cotterill, Does Science Aid Faith in Regard
to Creation? Cox, Miracles, 1-39—chapter 1, on the Original
Miracle—that of Creation; Zöckler, Theologie und
Naturwissenschaft, and Urgeschichte, 1-77; Reusch, Bib.
Schöpfungsgeschichte. On difficulties of the nebular hypothesis,
see Stallo, Modern Physics, 277-293.

V. God’s End in Creation.

Infinite wisdom must, in creating, propose to itself the most
comprehensive and the most valuable of ends,—the end most worthy of God,
and the end most fruitful in good. Only in the light of the end proposed
can we properly judge of God’s work, or of God’s character as revealed
therein.

It would seem that Scripture should give us an answer to the
question: Why did God create? The great Architect can best tell
his own design. Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit
concerning God than to God himself?” George A. Gordon, New Epoch
for Faith, 15—“God is necessarily a being of ends. Teleology is
the warp and woof of humanity; it must be in the warp and woof of
Deity. Evolutionary science has but strengthened this view.
Natural science is but a mean disguise for ignorance if it does
not imply cosmical purpose. The movement of life from lower to
higher is a movement upon ends. Will is the last account of the
universe, and will is the faculty for ends. The moment one
concludes that God is, it appears certain that he is a being of
ends. The universe is alive with desire and movement.
Fundamentally it is throughout an expression of will. And it
follows, that the ultimate end of God in human history must be
worthy of himself.”

In determining this end, we turn first to:

1. The testimony of Scripture.

This may be summed up in four statements. God finds his end (_a_) in
himself; (_b_) in his own will and pleasure; (_c_) in his own glory; (_d_)
in the making known of his power, his wisdom, his holy name. All these
statements may be combined in the following, namely, that God’s supreme
end in creation is nothing outside of himself, but is his own glory—in the
revelation, in and through creatures, of the infinite perfection of his
own being.

(_a_) _Rom. 11:36_—“_unto him are all things_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_all
things have been created ... unto him_” (Christ); compare _Is.
48:11_—“_for mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it
... and my glory will I not give to another_”; and _1 Cor.
15:28_—“_subject all things unto him, that God may be all in
all._” _Proverbs 16:4_—not “The Lord hath made all things for
himself” (A. V.) but “_Jehovah hath made everything for its own
end_” (Rev. Vers.).

(_b_) _Eph. 1:5, 6, 9_—“_having foreordained us ... according to
the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his
grace ... mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure
which he purposed in him_”; _Rev. 4:11_—“_thou didst create all
things, and because of thy will they were, and were created._”

(_c_) _Is. 43:7_—“_whom I have created for my glory_”; _60:21_ and
_61:3_—the righteousness and blessedness of the redeemed are
secured, that “_he may be glorified_”; _Luke 2:14_—the angels’
song at the birth of Christ expressed the design of the work of
salvation: “_Glory to God in the highest_,” and only through, and
for its sake, “_on earth peace among men in whom he is well
pleased_.”

(_d_) _Ps. 143:11_—“_In thy righteousness bring my soul out of
trouble_”; _Ez. 36:21, 22_—“_I do not this for your sake ... but
for mine holy name_”; _39:7_—“_my holy name will I make known_”;
_Rom. 9:17_—to Pharaoh: “_For this very purpose did I raise thee
up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be
published abroad in all the earth_”; _22, 23_—“_riches of his
glory_” made known in vessels of wrath, and in vessels of mercy;
_Eph. 3:9, 10_—“_created all things; to the intent that now unto
the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be
made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God._” See
Godet, on Ultimate Design of Man; “God in man and man in God,” in
Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:436, 535, 565,
568. _Per contra_, see Miller, Fetich in Theology, 19, 39-45,
88-98, 143-146.

Since holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, to make himself, his
own pleasure, his own glory, his own manifestation, to be his end in
creation, is to find his chief end in his own holiness, its maintenance,
expression, and communication. To make this his chief end, however, is not
to exclude certain subordinate ends, such as the revelation of his wisdom,
power, and love, and the consequent happiness of innumerable creatures to
whom this revelation is made.

God’s glory is that which makes him glorious. It is not something
without, like the praise and esteem of men, but something within,
like the dignity and value of his own attributes. To a noble man,
praise is very distasteful unless he is conscious of something in
himself that justifies it. We must be like God to be
self-respecting. Pythagoras said well: “Man’s end is to be like
God.” And so God must look within, and find his honor and his end
in himself. Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau: “This is the
glory, that in all conceived Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind,
Not mine but like mine,—for the double joy Making all things for
me, and me for Him.” Schurman, Belief in God, 214-216—“God
glorifies himself in communicating himself.” The object of his
love is the exercise of his holiness. Self-affirmation conditions
self-communication.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 94, 196—“Law and gospel are
only two sides of the one object, the highest glory of God in the
highest good of man.... Nor is it unworthy of God to make himself
his own end: (_a_) It is both unworthy and criminal for a finite
being to make himself his own end, because it is an end that can
be reached only by degrading self and wronging others; but (_b_)
For an infinite Creator not to make himself his own end would be
to dishonor himself and wrong his creatures; since, thereby, (_c_)
he must either act without an end, which is irrational, or from an
end which is impossible without wronging his creatures; because
(_d_) the highest welfare of his creatures, and consequently their
happiness, is impossible except through the subordination and
conformity of their wills to that of their infinitely perfect
Ruler; and (_e_) without this highest welfare and happiness of his
creatures God’s own end itself becomes impossible, for he is
glorified only as his character is reflected in, and recognized
by, his intelligent creatures.” Creation can add nothing to the
essential wealth or worthiness of God. If the end were outside
himself, it would make him dependent and a servant. The old
theologians therefore spoke of God’s “declarative glory,” rather
than God’s “essential glory,” as resulting from man’s obedience
and salvation.

2. The testimony of reason.

That his own glory, in the sense just mentioned, is God’s supreme end in
creation, is evident from the following considerations:

(_a_) God’s own glory is the only end actually and perfectly attained in
the universe. Wisdom and omnipotence cannot choose an end which is
destined to be forever unattained; for _“__what his soul desireth, even
that he doeth__”__ (Job 23:13)_. God’s supreme end cannot be the happiness
of creatures, since many are miserable here and will be miserable forever.
God’s supreme end cannot be the holiness of creatures, for many are unholy
here and will be unholy forever. But while neither the holiness nor the
happiness of creatures is actually and perfectly attained, God’s glory is
made known and will be made known in both the saved and the lost. This
then must be God’s supreme end in creation.

This doctrine teaches us that none can frustrate God’s plan. God
will get glory out of every human life. Man may glorify God
voluntarily by love and obedience, but if he will not do this he
will be compelled to glorify God by his rejection and punishment.
Better be the molten iron that runs freely into the mold prepared
by the great Designer, than be the hard and cold iron that must be
hammered into shape. Cleanthes, quoted by Seneca: “Ducunt volentem
fata, nolentem trahunt.” W. C. Wilkinson, Epic of Saul, 271—“But
some are tools, and others ministers, Of God, who works his holy
will with all.” Christ baptizes _“__in the Holy Spirit and in
fire__”__ (Mat. 3:11)_. Alexander McLaren: “There are two fires,
to one or other of which we must be delivered. Either we shall
gladly accept the purifying fire of the Spirit which burns sin out
of us, or we shall have to meet the punitive fire which burns up
us and our sins together. To be cleansed by the one or to be
consumed by the other is the choice before each one of us.” Hare,
Mission of the Comforter, on _John 16:8_, shows that the Holy
Spirit either _convinces_ those who yield to his influence, or
_convicts_ those who resist—the word ἐλέγχω having this double
significance.

(_b_) God’s glory is the end intrinsically most valuable. The good of
creatures is of insignificant importance compared with this. Wisdom
dictates that the greater interest should have precedence of the less.
Because God can choose no greater end, he must choose for his end himself.
But this is to choose his holiness, and his glory in the manifestation of
that holiness.

_Is. 40:15, 16_—“_Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance_”—like the drop
that falls unobserved from the bucket, like the fine dust of the
scales which the tradesman takes no notice of in weighing, so are
all the combined millions of earth and heaven before God. He
created, and he can in an instant destroy. The universe is but a
drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. It is more important
that God should be glorified than that the universe should be
happy. As we read in _Heb. 6:13_—“_since he could swear by none
greater, he sware by himself_”—so here we may say: Because he
could choose no greater end in creating, he chose himself. But to
swear by himself is to swear by his holiness (_Ps. 89:35_). We
infer that to find his end in himself is to find that end in his
holiness. See Martineau on Malebranche, in Types, 177.

The stick or the stone does not exist for itself, but for some
consciousness. The soul of man exists in part for itself. But it
is conscious that in a more important sense it exists for God.
“Modern thought,” it is said, “worships and serves the creature
more than the Creator; indeed, the chief end of the Creator seems
to be to glorify man and to enjoy him forever.” So the small boy
said his Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to
annoy him forever.” Prof. Clifford: “The kingdom of God is
obsolete; the kingdom of man has now come.” All this is the
insanity of sin. _Per contra_, see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 329,
330—“Two things are plain in Edwards’s doctrine: first, that God
cannot love anything other than himself: he is so great, so
preponderating an amount of being, that what is left is hardly
worth considering; secondly, so far as God has any love for the
creature, it is because he is himself diffused therein: the
fulness of his own essence has overflowed into an outer world, and
that which he loves in created beings is his essence imparted to
them.” But we would add that Edwards does not say they are
themselves of the essence of God; see his Works, 2:210, 211.

(_c_) His own glory is the only end which consists with God’s independence
and sovereignty. Every being is dependent upon whomsoever or whatsoever he
makes his ultimate end. If anything in the creature is the last end of
God, God is dependent upon the creature. But since God is dependent only
on himself, he must find in himself his end.

To create is not to increase his blessedness, but only to reveal
it. There is no need or deficiency which creation supplies. The
creatures who derive all from him can add nothing to him. All our
worship is only the rendering back to him of that which is his
own. He notices us only for his own sake and not because our
little rivulets of praise add anything to the ocean-like fulness
of his joy. For his own sake, and not because of our misery or our
prayers, he redeems and exalts us. To make our pleasure and
welfare his ultimate end would be to abdicate his throne. He
creates, therefore, only for his own sake and for the sake of his
glory. To this reasoning the London Spectator replies: “The glory
of God is the splendor of a manifestation, not the intrinsic
splendor manifested. The splendor of a manifestation, however,
consists in the effect of the manifestation on those to whom it is
given. Precisely because the manifestation of God’s goodness can
be useful to us and cannot be useful to him, must its
manifestation be intended for our sake and not for his sake. We
gain everything by it—he nothing, except so far as it is his own
will that we should gain what he desires to bestow upon us.” In
this last clause we find the acknowledgment of weakness in the
theory that God’s supreme end is the good of his creatures. God
does gain the fulfilment of his plan, the doing of his will, the
manifestation of himself. The great painter loves his picture less
than he loves his ideal. He paints in order to express himself.
God loves each soul which he creates, but he loves yet more the
expression of his own perfections in it. And this self-expression
is his end. Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 54—“God is the perfect
Poet, Who in creation acts his own conceptions.” Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:357, 358; Shairp, Province of Poetry, 11, 12.

God’s love makes him a self-expressing being. Self-expression is
an inborn impulse in his creatures. All genius partakes of this
characteristic of God. Sin substitutes concealment for outflow,
and stops this self-communication which would make the good of
each the good of all. Yet even sin cannot completely prevent it.
The wicked man is impelled to confess. By natural law the secrets
of all hearts will be made manifest at the judgment. Regeneration
restores the freedom and joy of self-manifestation. Christianity
and confession of Christ are inseparable. The preacher is simply a
Christian further advanced in this divine privilege. We need
utterance. Prayer is the most complete self-expression, and God’s
presence is the only land of perfectly free speech.

The great poet comes nearest, in the realm of secular things, to
realizing this privilege of the Christian. No great poet ever
wrote his best work for money, or for fame, or even for the sake
of doing good. Hawthorne was half-humorous and only partially
sincere, when he said he would never have written a page except
for pay. The hope of pay may have set his pen a-going, but only
love for his work could have made that work what it is. Motley
more truly declared that it was all up with a writer when he began
to consider the money he was to receive. But Hawthorne needed the
money to live on, while Motley had a rich father and uncle to back
him. The great writer certainly absorbs himself in his work. With
him necessity and freedom combine. He sings as the bird sings,
without dogmatic intent. Yet he is great in proportion as he is
moral and religious at heart. “Arma virumque cano” is the only
first person singular in the Æneid in which the author himself
speaks, yet the whole Æneid is a revelation of Virgil. So we know
little of Shakespeare’s life, but much of Shakespeare’s genius.

Nothing is added to the tree when it blossoms and bears fruit; it
only reveals its own inner nature. But we must distinguish in man
his true nature from his false nature. Not his private
peculiarities, but that in him which is permanent and universal,
is the real treasure upon which the great poet draws. Longfellow:
“He is the greatest artist then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who
follows nature. Never man, as artist or as artizan, Pursuing his
own fantasies, Can touch the human heart or please, Or satisfy our
nobler needs.” Tennyson, after observing the subaqueous life of a
brook, exclaimed: “What an imagination God has!” Caird, Philos.
Religion, 245—“The world of finite intelligences, though distinct
from God, is still in its ideal nature one with him. That which
God creates, and by which he reveals the hidden treasures of his
wisdom and love, is still not foreign to his own infinite life,
but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know him, in
the self-surrender of the hearts that love him, it is no paradox
to affirm that he knows and loves himself.”

(_d_) His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a
subordinate end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the
universe are bound up in the interests of God. There is no holiness or
happiness for creatures except as God is absolute sovereign, and is
recognized as such. It is therefore not selfishness, but benevolence, for
God to make his own glory the supreme object of creation. Glory is not
vain-glory, and in expressing his ideal, that is, in expressing himself,
in his creation, he communicates to his creatures the utmost possible
good.

This self-expression is not selfishness but benevolence. As the
true poet forgets himself in his work, so God does not manifest
himself for the sake of what he can make by it. Self-manifestation
is an end in itself. But God’s self-manifestation comprises all
good to his creatures. We are bound to love ourselves and our own
interests just in proportion to the value of those interests. The
monarch of a realm or the general of an army must be careful of
his life, because the sacrifice of it may involve the loss of
thousands of lives of soldiers or subjects. So God is the heart of
the great system. Only by being tributary to the heart can the
members be supplied with streams of holiness and happiness. And so
for only one Being in the universe is it safe to live for himself.
Man should not live for himself, because there is a higher end.
But there is no higher end for God. “Only one being in the
universe is excepted from the duty of subordination. Man must be
subject to the ‘_higher powers_’ (_Rom. 13:1_). But there are no
higher powers to God.” See Park, Discourses, 181-209.

Bismarck’s motto: “Ohne Kaiser, kein Reich”—“Without an emperor,
there can be no empire”—applies to God, as Von Moltke’s motto:
“Erst wägen, dann wagen”—“First weigh, then dare”—applies to man.
Edwards, Works, 2:215—“Selfishness is no otherwise vicious or
unbecoming than as one is less than a multitude. The public weal
is of greater value than his particular interest. It is fit and
suitable that God should value himself infinitely more than his
creatures.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:3—“The single and peculiar life
is bound With all the strength and armor of the mind To keep
itself from noyance; but much more That spirit upon whose weal
depends and rests The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not
alone, but like a gulf doth draw What’s near it with it: it is a
massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, To whose
huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis’d and adjoined;
which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone did the king sigh, But
with a general groan.”

(_e_) God’s glory is the end which in a right moral system is proposed to
creatures. This must therefore be the end which he in whose image they are
made proposes to himself. He who constitutes the centre and end of all his
creatures must find his centre and end in himself. This principle of moral
philosophy, and the conclusion drawn from it, are both explicitly and
implicitly taught in Scripture.

The beginning of all religion is the choosing of God’s end as our
end—the giving up of our preference of happiness, and the entrance
upon a life devoted to God. That happiness is not the ground of
moral obligation, is plain from the fact that there is no
happiness in seeking happiness. That the holiness of God is the
ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that the search
after holiness is not only successful in itself, but brings
happiness also in its train. Archbishop Leighton, Works, 695—“It
is a wonderful instance of wisdom and goodness that God has so
connected his own glory with our happiness, that we cannot
properly intend the one, but that the other must follow as a
matter of course, and our own felicity is at last resolved into
his eternal glory.” That God will certainly secure the end for
which he created, his own glory, and that his end is our end, is
the true source of comfort in affliction, of strength in labor, of
encouragement in prayer. See _Psalm 25:11_—“_For thy name’s
sake.... Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great_”; _115:1_—“_Not
unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory_”;
_Mat. 6:33_—“_Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you_”; _1 Cor.
10:31_—“_Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God_”; _1 Pet. 2:9_—“_ye are an elect race
... that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you
out of darkness into his marvelous light_”; _4:11_—speaking,
ministering, “_that in all things God may be glorified through
Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and
ever. Amen._” On the whole subject, see Edwards, Works, 2:193-257;
Janet, Final Causes, 443-455; Princeton Theol. Essays, 2:15-32;
Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 358-362.

It is a duty to make the most of ourselves, but only for God’s
sake. _Jer. 45:5_—“_seekest thou great things for thyself? seek
them not!_” But it is nowhere forbidden us to seek great things
for God. Rather we are to “_desire earnestly the greater gifts_”
(_1 Cor. 12:31_). Self-realization as well as self-expression is
native to humanity. Kant: “Man, and with him every rational
creature, is an end in himself.” But this seeking of his own good
is to be subordinated to the higher motive of God’s glory. The
difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate may consist
wholly in motive. The latter lives for self, the former for God.
Illustrate by the young man in Yale College who began to learn his
lessons for God instead of for self, leaving his salvation in
Christ’s hands. God requires self-renunciation, taking up the
cross, and following Christ, because the first need of the sinner
is to change his centre. To be self-centered is to be a savage.
The struggle for the life of others is better. But there is
something higher still. Life has dignity according to the worth of
the object we install in place of self. Follow Christ, make God
the center of your life,—so shall you achieve the best; see
Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 113-123.

George A. Gordon, The New Epoch for Faith, 11-13—“The ultimate
view of the universe is the religious view. Its worth is
ultimately worth for the supreme Being. Here is the note of
permanent value in Edwards’s great essay on The End of Creation.
The final value of creation is its value for God.... Men are men
in and through society—here is the truth which Aristotle
teaches—but Aristotle fails to see that society attains its end
only in and through God.” Hovey, Studies, 65—“To manifest the
glory or perfection of God is therefore the chief end of our
existence. To live in such a manner that his life is reflected in
ours; that his character shall reappear, at least faintly, in
ours; that his holiness and love shall be recognized and declared
by us, is to do that for which we are made. And so, in requiring
us to glorify himself, God simply requires us to do what is
absolutely right, and what is at the same time indispensable to
our highest welfare. Any lower aim could not have been placed
before us, without making us content with a character unlike that
of the First Good and the First Fair.” See statement and criticism
of Edwards’s view in Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 227-238.

VI. Relation of the Doctrine of Creation to other Doctrines.

1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.

Creation, as the work of God, manifests of necessity God’s moral
attributes. But the existence of physical and moral evil in the universe
appears, at first sight, to impugn these attributes, and to contradict the
Scripture declaration that the work of God’s hand was “very good” (Gen.
1:31). This difficulty may be in great part removed by considering that:

(_a_) At its first creation, the world was good in two senses: first, as
free from moral evil,—sin being a later addition, the work, not of God,
but of created spirits; secondly, as adapted to beneficent ends,—for
example, the revelation of God’s perfection, and the probation and
happiness of intelligent and obedient creatures.

(_b_) Physical pain and imperfection, so far as they existed before the
introduction of moral evil, are to be regarded: first, as congruous parts
of a system of which sin was foreseen to be an incident; and secondly, as
constituting, in part, the means of future discipline and redemption for
the fallen.

The coprolites of Saurians contain the scales and bones of fish
which they have devoured. _Rom. 8:20-22_—“_For the creation was
subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation_
[the irrational creation] _groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now_”; _23_—our mortal body, as a part of nature,
participates in the same groaning. _2 Cor. 4:17_—“_our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more
exceedingly an eternal weight of glory._” Bowne, Philosophy of
Theism, 224-240—“How explain our rather shabby universe? Pessimism
assumes that perfect wisdom is compatible only with a perfect
work, and that we know the universe to be truly worthless and
insignificant.” John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 29, brings
in a fearful indictment of nature, her storms, lightnings,
earthquakes, blight, decay, and death. Christianity however
regards these as due to man, not to God; as incidents of sin; as
the groans of creation, crying out for relief and liberty. Man’s
body, as a part of nature, waits for the adoption, and
resurrection of the body is to accompany the renewal of the world.

It was Darwin’s judgment that in the world of nature and of man,
on the whole, “happiness decidedly prevails.” Wallace, Darwinism,
36-40—“Animals enjoy all the happiness of which they are capable.”
Drummond, Ascent of Man, 203 _sq._—“In the struggle for life there
is no hate—only hunger.” Martineau, Study, 1:330—“Waste of life is
simply nature’s exuberance.” Newman Smyth, Place of Death in
Evolution, 44-56—“Death simply buries the useless waste. Death has
entered for life’s sake.” These utterances, however, come far
short of a proper estimate of the evils of the world, and they
ignore the Scriptural teaching with regard to the connection
between death and sin. A future world into which sin and death do
not enter shows that the present world is abnormal, and that
morality is the only cure for mortality. Nor can the imperfections
of the universe be explained by saying that they furnish
opportunity for struggle and for virtue. Robert Browning, Ring and
Book, Pope, 1875—“I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and
sorrow, would confound me else, Devised,—all pain, at most
expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain,—to evolve, By new
machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man—how else?—To
make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and
self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually godlike.” This seems
like doing evil that good may come. We can explain mortality only
by immorality, and that not in God but in man. Fairbairn:
“Suffering is God’s protest against sin.”

Wallace’s theory of the survival of the fittest was suggested by
the prodigal destructiveness of nature. Tennyson: “Finding that of
fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear.” William James: “Our
dogs are _in_ our human life, but not _of_ it. The dog, under the
knife of vivisection, cannot understand the purpose of his
suffering. For him it is only pain. So we may lie soaking in a
spiritual atmosphere, a dimension of Being which we have at
present no organ for apprehending. If we knew the purpose of our
life, all that is heroic in us would religiously acquiesce.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 72—“Love is prepared to take deeper
and sterner measures than benevolence, which is by itself a
shallow thing.” The Lakes of Killarny in Ireland show what a
paradise this world might be if war had not desolated it, and if
man had properly cared for it. Our moral sense cannot justify the
evil in creation except upon the hypothesis that this has some
cause and reason in the misconduct of man.

This is not a perfect world. It was not perfect even when
originally constituted. Its imperfection is due to sin. God made
it with reference to the Fall,—the stage was arranged for the
great drama of sin and redemption which was to be enacted thereon.
We accept Bushnell’s idea of “anticipative consequences,” and
would illustrate it by the building of a hospital-room while yet
no member of the family is sick, and by the salvation of the
patriarchs through a Christ yet to come. If the earliest
vertebrates of geological history were types of man and
preparations for his coming, then pain and death among those same
vertebrates may equally have been a type of man’s sin and its
results of misery. If sin had not been an incident, foreseen and
provided for, the world might have been a paradise. As a matter of
fact, it will become a paradise only at the completion of the
redemptive work of Christ. Kreibig, Versöhnung, 369—“The death of
Christ was accompanied by startling occurrences in the outward
world, to show that the effects of his sacrifice reached even into
nature.” Perowne refers _Ps. 96:10_—“_The world also is
established that it cannot be moved_”—to the restoration of the
inanimate creation; _cf._ _Heb. 12:27_—“_And this word, Yet once
more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as
of things that have been made, that those things which are not
shaken may remain_”; _Rev. 21:1, 5_—“_a new heaven and a new earth
... Behold, I make all things new._”

Much sport has been made of this doctrine of anticipative
consequences. James D. Dana: “It is funny that the sin of Adam
should have killed those old trilobites! The blunderbuss must have
kicked back into time at a tremendous rate to have hit those poor
innocents!” Yet every insurance policy, every taking out of an
umbrella, every buying of a wedding ring, is an anticipative
consequence. To deny that God made the world what it is in view of
the events that were to take place in it, is to concede to him
less wisdom than we attribute to our fellow-man. The most rational
explanation of physical evil in the universe is that of _Rom.
8:20, 21_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity ... by reason of
him who subjected it_”—_i. e._, by reason of the first man’s
sin—“_in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered_.”

Martineau, Types, 2:151—“What meaning could Pity have in a world
where suffering was not meant to be?” Hicks, Critique of Design
Arguments, 386—“The very badness of the world convinces us that
God is good.” And Sir Henry Taylor’s words: “Pain in man Bears the
high mission of the flail and fan; In brutes ’tis surely
piteous”—receive their answer: The brute is but an appendage to
man, and like inanimate nature it suffers from man’s fall—suffers
not wholly in vain, for even pain in brutes serves to illustrate
the malign influence of sin and to suggest motives for resisting
it. Pascal: “Whatever virtue can be bought with pain is cheaply
bought.” The pain and imperfection of the world are God’s frown
upon sin and his warning against it. See Bushnell, chapter on
Anticipative Consequences, in Nature and the Supernatural,
194-219. Also McCosh, Divine Government, 26-35, 249-261; Farrar,
Science and Theology, 82-105; Johnson, in Bap. Rev., 6:141-154;
Fairbairn, Philos. Christ. Religion, 94-168.

2. To the wisdom and free-will of God.

No plan whatever of a finite creation can fully express the infinite
perfection of God. Since God, however, is immutable, he must always have
had a plan of the universe; since he is perfect, he must have had the best
possible plan. As wise, God cannot choose a plan less good, instead of one
more good. As rational, he cannot between plans equally good make a merely
arbitrary choice. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty that
infinite wisdom will act wisely. As no compulsion from without, so no
necessity from within, moves God to create the actual universe. Creation
is both wise and free.

As God is both rational and wise, his having a plan of the
universe must be better than his not having a plan would be. But
the universe once was not; yet without a universe God was blessed
and sufficient to himself. God’s perfection therefore requires,
not that he have a universe, but that he have a plan of the
universe. Again, since God is both rational and wise, his actual
creation cannot be the worst possible, nor one arbitrarily chosen
from two or more equally good. It must be, all things considered,
the best possible. We are optimists rather than pessimists.

But we reject that form of optimism which regards evil as the
indispensable condition of the good, and sin as the direct product
of God’s will. We hold that other form of optimism which regards
sin as naturally destructive, but as made, in spite of itself, by
an overruling providence, to contribute to the highest good. For
the optimism which makes evil the necessary condition of finite
being, see Leibnitz, Opera Philosophica, 468, 624; Hedge, Ways of
the Spirit, 241; and Pope’s Essay on Man. For the better form of
optimism, see Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Schöpfung, 13:651-653;
Chalmers, Works, 2:286; Mark Hopkins, in Andover Rev., March,
1885:197-210; Luthardt, Lehre des freien Willens, 9, 10—“Calvin’s
_Quia voluit_ is not the last answer. We could have no heart for
such a God, for he would himself have no heart. Formal will alone
has no heart. In God real freedom controls formal, as in fallen
man, formal controls real.”

Janet, in his Final Causes, 429 sq. and 490-503, claims that
optimism subjects God to fate. We have shown that this objection
mistakes the certainty which is consistent with freedom for the
necessity which is inconsistent with freedom. The opposite
doctrine attributes an irrational arbitrariness to God. We are
warranted in saying that the universe at present existing,
considered as a partial realization of God’s developing plan, is
the best possible for this particular point of time,—in short,
that all is for the best,—see _Rom. 8:28_—“_to them that love God
all things work together for good_”; _1 Cor. 3:21_—“_all things
are yours._”

For denial of optimism in any form, see Watson, Theol. Institutes,
1:419; Hovey, God with Us, 206-208; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:419,
432, 566, and 2:145; Lipsius, Dogmatik, 234-255; Flint, Theism,
227-256; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 397-409, and esp. 405—“A wisdom
the resources of which have been so expended that it cannot equal
its past achievements is a finite capacity, and not the boundless
depth of the infinite God.” But we reply that a wisdom which does
not do that which is best is not wisdom. The limit is not in God’s
abstract power, but in his other attributes of truth, love, and
holiness. Hence God can say in _Is. 5:4_—“_what could have been
done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?_”

The perfect antithesis to an ethical and theistic optimism is
found in the non-moral and atheistic pessimism of Schopenhauer
(Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) and Hartmann (Philosophie des
Unbewussten). “All life is summed up in effort, and effort is
painful; therefore life is pain.” But we might retort: “Life is
active, and action is always accompanied with pleasure; therefore
life is pleasure.” See Frances Power Cobbe, Peak in Darien,
95-134, for a graphic account of Schopenhauer’s heartlessness,
cowardice and arrogance. Pessimism is natural to a mind soured by
disappointment and forgetful of God: _Eccl. 2:11_—“_all was vanity
and a striving after wind._” Homer: “There is nothing whatever
more wretched than man.” Seneca praises death as the best
invention of nature. Byron: “Count o’er the joys thine hours have
seen, Count o’er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever
thou hast been, ’Tis something better not to be.” But it has been
left to Schopenhauer and Hartmann to define will as unsatisfied
yearning, to regard life itself as a huge blunder, and to urge
upon the human race, as the only measure of permanent relief, a
united and universal act of suicide.

G. H. Beard, in Andover Rev., March, 1892—“Schopenhauer utters one
New Testament truth: the utter delusiveness of self-indulgence.
Life which is dominated by the desires, and devoted to mere
getting, is a pendulum swinging between pain and ennui.” Bowne,
Philos. of Theism, 124—“For Schopenhauer the world-ground is pure
will, without intellect or personality. But pure will is nothing.
Will itself, except as a function of a conscious and intelligent
spirit, is nothing.” Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philos.,
253-280—“Schopenhauer united Kant’s thought, ‘The inmost life of
all things is one,’ with the Hindoo insight, ‘The life of all
these things, That art Thou.’ To him music shows best what the
will is: passionate, struggling, wandering, restless, ever
returning to itself, full of longing, vigor, majesty, caprice.
Schopenhauer condemns individual suicide, and counsels
resignation. That I must ever desire yet never fully attain, leads
Hegel to the conception of the absolutely active and triumphant
spirit. Schopenhauer finds in it proof of the totally evil nature
of things. Thus while Hegel is an optimist, Schopenhauer is a
pessimist.”

Winwood Reade, in the title of his book, The Martyrdom of Man,
intends to describe human history. O. W. Holmes says that Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress “represents the universe as a trap which
catches most of the human vermin that have its bait dangled before
them.” Strauss: “If the prophets of pessimism prove that man had
better never have lived, they thereby prove that themselves had
better never have prophesied.” Hawthorne, Note-book: “Curious to
imagine what mournings and discontent would be excited, if any of
the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,—as, for instance, death.”

On both the optimism of Leibnitz and the pessimism of
Schopenhauer, see Bowen, Modern Philosophy; Tulloch, Modern
Theories, 169-221; Thompson, on Modern Pessimism, in Present Day
Tracts, 6: no. 34; Wright, on Ecclesiastes, 141-216; Barlow,
Ultimatum of Pessimism: Culture tends to misery; God is the most
miserable of beings; creation is a plaster for the sore. See also
Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:197—“Disorder and
misery are so mingled with order and beneficence, that both
optimism and pessimism are possible.” Yet it is evident that there
must be more construction than destruction, or the world would not
be existing. Buddhism, with its Nirvana-refuge, is essentially
pessimistic.

3. To Christ as the Revealer of God.

Since Christ is the Revealer of God in creation as well as in redemption,
the remedy for pessimism is (1) the recognition of God’s transcendence—the
universe at present not fully expressing his power, his holiness or his
love, and nature being a scheme of progressive evolution which we
imperfectly comprehend and in which there is much to follow; (2) the
recognition of sin as the free act of the creature, by which all sorrow
and pain have been caused, so that God is in no proper sense its author;
(3) the recognition of Christ _for_ us on the Cross and Christ _in_ us by
his Spirit, as revealing the age-long sorrow and suffering of God’s heart
on account of human transgression, and as manifested, in self-sacrificing
love, to deliver men from the manifold evils in which their sins have
involved them; and (4) the recognition of present probation and future
judgment, so that provision is made for removing the scandal now resting
upon the divine government and for justifying the ways of God to men.

Christ’s Cross is the proof that God suffers more than man from
human sin, and Christ’s judgment will show that the wicked cannot
always prosper. In Christ alone we find the key to the dark
problems of history and the guarantee of human progress. _Rom.
3:25_—“_whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in
his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over
of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God_”;
_8:32_—“_He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all
things?_” _Heb. 2:8, 9_—“_we see not yet all things subjected to
him. But we behold ... Jesus ... crowned with glory and honor_”;
_Acts 17:31_—“_he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the
earth in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained._” See
Hill, Psychology, 283; Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems,
240, 241; Bruce, Providential Order, 71-88; J. M. Whiton, in Am.
Jour. Theology, April, 1901:318.

G. A. Gordon, New Epoch of Faith, 199—“The book of Job is called
by Huxley the classic of pessimism.” Dean Swift, on the successive
anniversaries of his own birth, was accustomed to read the third
chapter of Job, which begins with the terrible “_Let the day
perish wherein I was born_” (_3:3_). But predestination and
election are not arbitrary. Wisdom has chosen the best possible
plan, has ordained the salvation of all who could wisely have been
saved, has permitted the least evil that it was wise to permit.
_Rev. 4:11_—“_Thou didst create all things, and because of thy
will they were, and were created._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
79—“All things were present to God’s mind because of his will, and
then, when it pleased him, had being given to them.” Pfleiderer,
Grundriss, 36, advocates a realistic idealism. Christianity, he
says, is not abstract optimism, for it recognizes the evil of the
actual and regards conflict with it as the task of the world’s
history; it is not pessimism, for it regards the evil as not
unconquerable, but regards the good as the end and the power of
the world.

Jones, Robert Browning, 109, 311—“Pantheistic optimism asserts
that all things _are_ good; Christian optimism asserts that all
things are _working together_ for good. Reverie in Asolando: ‘From
the first Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive
but for closer view, Love were as plain to see.’ Balaustion’s
Adventure: ‘Gladness be with thee, Helper of the world! I think
this is the authentic sign and seal Of Godship, that it ever waxes
glad, And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts Into a rage
to suffer for mankind And recommence at sorrow.’ Browning
endeavored to find God in man, and still to leave man free. His
optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. He abhorred
the doctrine that the evils of the world are due to merely
arbitrary sovereignty, and this doctrine he has satirized in the
monologue of Caliban on Setebos: ‘Loving not, hating not, just
choosing so.’ Pippa Passes: ‘God’s in his heaven—All’s right with
the world.’ But how is this consistent with the guilt of the
sinner? Browning does not say. He leaves the antinomy unsolved,
only striving to hold both truths in their fulness. Love demands
distinction between God and man, yet love unites God and man.
Saul: ‘All’s love, but all’s law.’ Carlyle forms a striking
contrast to Browning. Carlyle was a pessimist. He would renounce
happiness for duty, and as a means to this end would suppress, not
idle speech alone, but thought itself. The battle is fought
moreover in a foreign cause. God’s cause is not ours. Duty is a
menace, like the duty of a slave. The moral law is not a
beneficent revelation, reconciling God and man. All is fear, and
there is no love.” Carlyle took Emerson through the London slums
at midnight and asked him: “Do you believe in a devil now?” But
Emerson replied: “I am more and more convinced of the greatness
and goodness of the English people.” On Browning and Carlyle, see
A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447.

Henry Ward Beecher, when asked whether life was worth living,
replied that that depended very much upon the liver. Optimism and
pessimism are largely matters of digestion. President Mark Hopkins
asked a bright student if he did not believe this the best
possible system. When the student replied in the negative, the
President asked him how he could improve upon it. He answered: “I
would kill off all the bed-bugs, mosquitoes and fleas, and make
oranges and bananas grow further north.” The lady who was bitten
by a mosquito asked whether it would be proper to speak of the
creature as “a depraved little insect.” She was told that this
would be improper, because depravity always implies a previous
state of innocence, whereas the mosquito has always been as bad as
he now is. Dr. Lyman Beecher, however, seems to have held the
contrary view. When he had captured the mosquito who had bitten
him, he crushed the insect, saying: “There! I’ll show you that
there is a God in Israel!” He identified the mosquito with all the
corporate evil of the world. Allen, Religious Progress,
22—“Wordsworth hoped still, although the French Revolution
depressed him; Macaulay, after reading Ranke’s History of the
Popes, denied all religious progress.” On Huxley’s account of
evil, see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 265 _sq._

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:301, 302—“The Greeks of Homer’s
time had a naïve and youthful optimism. But they changed from an
optimistic to a pessimistic view. This change resulted from their
increasing contemplation of the moral disorder of the world.” On
the melancholy of the Greeks, see Butcher, Aspects of Greek
Genius, 130-165. Butcher holds that the great difference between
Greeks and Hebrews was that the former had no hope or ideal of
progress. A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 74-102—“The voluptuous
poets are pessimistic, because sensual pleasure quickly passes,
and leaves lassitude and enervation behind. Pessimism is the basis
of Stoicism also. It is inevitable where there is no faith in God
and in a future life. The life of a seed underground is not
inspiring, except in prospect of sun and flowers and fruit.”
Bradley, Appearance and Reality, xiv, sums up the optimistic view
as follows: “The world is the best of all possible worlds, and
everything in it is a necessary evil.” He should have added that
pain is the exception in the world, and finite free will is the
cause of the trouble. Pain is made the means of developing
character, and, when it has accomplished its purpose, pain will
pass away.

Jackson, James Martineau, 390—“All is well, says an American
preacher, for if there is anything that is not well, it is well
that it is not well. It is well that falsity and hate are not
well, that malice and envy and cruelty are not well. What hope for
the world or what trust in God, if they were well?” _Live_ spells
_Evil_, only when we read it the wrong way. James Russell Lowell,
Letters, 2:51—“The more I learn ... the more my confidence in the
general good sense and honest intentions of mankind increases....
The signs of the times cease to alarm me, and seem as natural as
to a mother the teething of her seventh baby. I take great comfort
in God. I think that he is considerably amused with us sometimes,
and that he likes us on the whole, and would not let us get at the
matchbox so carelessly as he does, unless he knew that the frame
of his universe was fireproof.”

Compare with all this the hopeless pessimism of Omar Kháyyám,
Rubáiyát, stanza 99—“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To
grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would not we shatter it
to bits—and then Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Royce,
Studies of Good and Evil, 14, in discussing the Problem of Job,
suggests the following solution: “When you suffer, your sufferings
are God’s sufferings, not his external work, not his external
penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own
personal woe. In you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and
has all your concern in overcoming this grief.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality, 349, 505—“The Christian ideal is not
maintainable, if we assume that God could as easily develop his
creation without conflict.... Happiness is only one of his ends;
the evolution of moral character is another.” A. E. Waffle, Uses
of Moral Evil: “(1) It aids development of holy character by
opposition; (2) affords opportunity for ministering; (3) makes
known to us some of the chief attributes of God; (4) enhances the
blessedness of heaven.”

4. To Providence and Redemption.

Christianity is essentially a scheme of supernatural love and power. It
conceives of God as above the world, as well as in it,—able to manifest
himself, and actually manifesting himself, in ways unknown to mere nature.

But this absolute sovereignty and transcendence, which are manifested in
providence and redemption, are inseparable from creatorship. If the world
be eternal, like God, it must be an efflux from the substance of God and
must be absolutely equal with God. Only a proper doctrine of creation can
secure God’s absolute distinctness from the world and his sovereignty over
it.

The logical alternative of creation is therefore a system of pantheism, in
which God is an impersonal and necessary force. Hence the pantheistic
_dicta_ of Fichte: “The assumption of a creation is the fundamental error
of all false metaphysics and false theology”; of Hegel: “God evolves the
world out of himself, in order to take it back into himself again in the
Spirit”; and of Strauss: “Trinity and creation, speculatively viewed, are
one and the same,—only the one is viewed absolutely, the other
empirically.”

Sterrett, Studies, 155, 156—“Hegel held that it belongs to God’s
nature to create. Creation is God’s positing an _other_ which is
not an _other_. The creation is _his_, belongs to his being or
essence. This involves the finite as his own self-posited object
and self-revelation. It is necessary for God to create. Love,
Hegel says, is only another expression of the eternally Triune
God. Love must create and love _another_. But in loving this
_other_, God is only loving himself.” We have already, in our
discussion of the theory of creation from eternity, shown the
insufficiency of creation to satisfy either the love or the power
of God. A proper doctrine of the Trinity renders the hypothesis of
an eternal creation unnecessary and irrational. That hypothesis is
pantheistic in tendency.

Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 97—“Dualism might be called a
logical alternative of creation, but for the fact that its notion
of two gods in self-contradictory, and leads to the lowering of
the idea of the Godhead, so that the impersonal god of pantheism
takes its place.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2:11—“The world
cannot be necessitated in order to satisfy either want or
over-fulness in God.... The doctrine of absolute creation prevents
the _confounding_ of God with the world. The declaration that the
Spirit brooded over the formless elements, and that life was
developed under the continuous operation of God’s laws and
presence, prevents the _separation_ of God from the world. Thus
pantheism and deism are both avoided.” See Kant and Spinoza
contrasted in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:468, 469. The unusually full
treatment of the doctrine of creation in this chapter is due to a
conviction that the doctrine constitutes an antidote to most of
the false philosophy of our time.

5. To the Observance of the Sabbath.

We perceive from this point of view, moreover, the importance and value of
the Sabbath, as commemorating God’s act of creation, and thus God’s
personality, sovereignty, and transcendence.

(_a_) The Sabbath is of perpetual obligation as God’s appointed memorial
of his creating activity. The Sabbath requisition antedates the decalogue
and forms a part of the moral law. Made at the creation, it applies to man
as man, everywhere and always, in his present state of being.

_Gen. 2:3_—“_And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it;
because that in it he rested from all his work which God had
created and made._” Our rest is to be a miniature representation
of God’s rest. As God worked six divine days and rested one divine
day, so are we in imitation of him to work six human days and to
rest one human day. In the Old Testament there are indications of
an observance of the Sabbath day before the Mosaic legislation:
_Gen. 4:3_—“_And in process of time_ [lit. “_at the end of days_”]
_it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto Jehovah_”; _Gen. 8:10, 12_—Noah twice waited seven
days before sending forth the dove from the ark; _Gen. 29:27,
28_—“_fulfil the week_”; _cf._ _Judges 14:12_—“_the seven days of
the feast_”; _Ex. 16:5_—double portion of manna promised on the
sixth day, that none be gathered on the Sabbath (_cf._ _verses 20,
30_). This division of days into weeks is best explained by the
original institution of the Sabbath at man’s creation. Moses in
the fourth commandment therefore speaks of it as already known and
observed: _Ex. 20:8_—“_Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy._”

The Sabbath is recognized in Assyrian accounts of the Creation;
see Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., 5:427, 428; Schrader, Keilinschriften,
ed. 1883:18-22. Professor Sayce: “Seven was a sacred number
descended to the Semites from their Accadian predecessors. Seven
by seven had the magic knots to be tied by the witch; seven times
had the body of the sick man to be anointed by the purifying oil.
As the Sabbath of rest fell on each seventh day of the week, so
the planets, like the demon-messengers of Anu, were seven in
number, and the gods of the number seven received a particular
honor.” But now the discovery of a calendar tablet in Mesopotamia
shows us the week of seven days and the Sabbath in full sway in
ancient Babylon long before the days of Moses. In this tablet the
seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth
days are called Sabbaths, the very word used by Moses, and
following it are the words: “A day of rest.” The restrictions are
quite as rigid in this tablet as those in the law of Moses. This
institution must have gone back to the Accadian period, before the
days of Abraham. In one of the recent discoveries this day is
called “the day of rest for the heart,” but of the gods, on
account of the propitiation offered on that day, their heart being
put at rest. See Jastrow, in Am. Jour. Theol., April, 1898.

S. S. Times, Jan. 1892, art. by Dr. Jensen of the University of
Strassburg on the Biblical and Babylonian Week: “_Subattu_ in
Babylonia means day of propitiation, implying a religious purpose.
A week of seven days is implied in the Babylonian Flood-Story, the
rain continuing six days and ceasing on the seventh, and another
period of seven days intervening between the cessation of the
storm and the disembarking of Noah, the dove, swallow and raven
being sent out again on the seventh day. Sabbaths are called days
of rest for the heart, days of the completion of labor.” Hutton,
Essays, 2:229—“Because there is in God’s mind a spring of eternal
rest as well as of creative energy, we are enjoined to respect the
law of rest as well as the law of labor.” We may question, indeed,
whether this doctrine of God’s rest does not of itself refute the
theory of eternal, continuous, and necessary creation.

(_b_) Neither our Lord nor his apostles abrogated the Sabbath of the
decalogue. The new dispensation does away with the Mosaic prescriptions as
to the method of keeping the Sabbath, but at the same time declares its
observance to be of divine origin and to be a necessity of human nature.

Not everything in the Mosaic law is abrogated in Christ. Worship
and reverence, regard for life and purity and property, are
binding still. Christ did not nail to his cross every commandment
of the decalogue. Jesus does not defend himself from the charge of
Sabbath-breaking by saying that the Sabbath is abrogated, but by
asserting the true idea of the Sabbath as fulfilling a fundamental
human need. _Mark 2:27_—“_The Sabbath was made_ [by God] _for man,
and not man for the Sabbath._” The Puritan restrictions are not
essential to the Sabbath, nor do they correspond even with the
methods of later Old Testament observance. The Jewish Sabbath was
more like the New England Thanksgiving than like the New England
Fast-day. _Nehemiah 8:12, 18_—“_And all the people went their way
to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great
mirth.... And they kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth
day was a solemn assembly, according unto the ordinance_”—seems to
include the Sabbath day as a day of gladness.

Origen, in Homily 23 on _Numbers_ (Migne, II:358): “Leaving
therefore the Jewish observances of the Sabbath, let us see what
ought to be for a Christian the observance of the Sabbath. On the
Sabbath day nothing of all the actions of the world ought to be
done.” Christ walks through the cornfield, heals a paralytic, and
dines with a Pharisee, all on the Sabbath day. John Milton, in his
Christian Doctrine, is an extreme anti-sabbatarian, maintaining
that the decalogue was abolished with the Mosaic law. He thinks it
uncertain whether “the Lord’s day” was weekly or annual. The
observance of the Sabbath, to his mind, is a matter not of
authority, but of convenience. Archbishop Paley: “In my opinion
St. Paul considered the Sabbath a sort of Jewish ritual, and not
obligatory on Christians. A cessation on that day from labor
beyond the time of attending public worship is not intimated in
any part of the New Testament. The notion that Jesus and his
apostles meant to retain the Jewish Sabbath, only shifting the day
from the seventh to the first, prevails without sufficient
reason.”

According to Guizot, Calvin was so pleased with a play to be acted
in Geneva on Sunday, that he not only attended but deferred his
sermon so that his congregation might attend. When John Knox
visited Calvin, he found him playing a game of bowls on Sunday.
Martin Luther said: “Keep the day holy for its use’s sake, both to
body and soul. But if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere
day’s sake, if any one set up its observance on a Jewish
foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to
dance on it, to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment
on the Christian spirit and liberty.” But the most liberal and
even radical writers of our time recognize the economic and
patriotic uses of the Sabbath. R. W. Emerson said that its
observance is “the core of our civilization.” Charles Sumner: “If
we would perpetuate our Republic, we must sanctify it as well as
fortify it, and make it at once a temple and a citadel.” Oliver
Wendell Holmes: “He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor.” In
Pennsylvania they bring up from the mines every Sunday the mules
that have been working the whole week in darkness,—otherwise they
would become blind. So men’s spiritual sight will fail them if
they do not weekly come up into God’s light.

(_c_) The Sabbath law binds us to set apart a seventh portion of our time
for rest and worship. It does not enjoin the simultaneous observance by
all the world of a fixed portion of absolute time, nor is such observance
possible. Christ’s example and apostolic sanction have transferred the
Sabbath from the seventh day to the first, for the reason that this last
is the day of Christ’s resurrection, and so the day when God’s spiritual
creation became in Christ complete.

No exact portion of absolute time can be simultaneously observed
by men in different longitudes. The day in Berlin begins six hours
before the day in New York, so that a whole quarter of what is
Sunday in Berlin is still Saturday in New York. Crossing the 180th
degree of longitude from West to East we gain a day, and a
seventh-day Sabbatarian who circumnavigated the globe might thus
return to his starting point observing the same Sabbath with his
fellow Christians. A. S. Carman, in the Examiner, Jan. 4, 1894,
asserts that Heb. 4:5-9 alludes to the change of day from the
seventh to the first, in the references to “_a Sabbath rest_” that
“_remaineth_,” and to “_another day_” taking the place of the
original promised day of rest. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles:
“On the Lord’s Day assemble ye together, and give thanks, and
break bread.”

The change from the seventh day to the first seems to have been
due to the resurrection of Christ upon “_the first day of the
week_” (_Mat. 28:1_), to his meeting with the disciples upon that
day and upon the succeeding Sunday (_John 20:26_), and to the
pouring out of the Spirit upon the Pentecostal Sunday seven weeks
after (_Acts 2:1_—see Bap. Quar. Rev., 185:229-232). Thus by
Christ’s own example and by apostolic sanction the first day
became “_the Lord’s day_” (_Rev. 1:10_), on which believers met
regularly each week with their Lord (_Acts 20:7_—“_the first day
of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread_”) and
brought together their benevolent contributions (_1 Cor. 16:1,
2_—“_Now concerning the collection for the saints ... Upon the
first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as
he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come_”).
Eusebius, Com. on _Ps. 92_ (Migne, V:1191, C): “Wherefore those
things [the Levitical regulations] having been already rejected,
the Logos through the new Covenant transferred and changed the
festival of the Sabbath to the rising of the sun ... the Lord’s
day ... holy and spiritual Sabbaths.”

Justin Martyr, First Apology: “On the day called Sunday all who
live in city or country gather together in one place, and the
memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are
read.... Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common
assembly, because it is the first day on which God made the world
and Jesus our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For he
was crucified on the day before, that of Saturn (Saturday); and on
the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun
(Sunday), having appeared to his apostles and disciples he taught
them these things which we have submitted to you for your
consideration.” This seems to intimate that Jesus between his
resurrection and ascension gave command respecting the observance
of the first day of the week. He was “_received up_” only after
“_he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the
apostles whom he had chosen_” (_Acts 1:2_).

The Christian Sabbath, then, is the day of Christ’s resurrection.
The Jewish Sabbath commemorated only the beginning of the world;
the Christian Sabbath commemorates also the new creation of the
world in Christ, in which God’s work in humanity first becomes
complete. C. H. M. on _Gen. 2_: “If I celebrate the seventh day it
marks me as an earthly man, inasmuch as that day is clearly the
rest of earth—creation-rest; if I intelligently celebrate the
first day of the week, I am marked as a heavenly man, believing in
the new creation in Christ.” (_Gal. 4:10, 11_—“_Ye observe days,
and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you, least by
any means I have bestowed labor upon you in vain_”; _Col.
2:16,17_—“_Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or
in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: which
are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s._”)
See George S. Gray, Eight Studies on the Lord’s Day; Hessey,
Bampton Lectures on the Sunday; Gilfillan, The Sabbath; Wood,
Sabbath Essays; Bacon, Sabbath Observance; Hadley, Essays
Philological and Critical, 325-345; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:
321-348; Lotz, Quæstiones de Historia Sabbati; Maurice, Sermons on
the Sabbath; Prize Essays on the Sabbath; Crafts, The Sabbath for
Man; A. E. Waffle, The Lord’s Day; Alvah Hovey, Studies in Ethics
and Religion, 271-320; Guirey, The Hallowed Day; Gamble, Sunday
and the Sabbath; Driver, art.: Sabbath, in Hastings’ Bible
Dictionary; Broadus, Am. Com. on _Mat. 12:3_. For the seventh-day
view, see T. B. Brown, The Sabbath; J. N. Andrews, History of the
Sabbath. _Per contra_, see Prof. A. Rauschenbusch, Saturday or
Sunday?

Section II.—Preservation.

I. Definition of Preservation.

Preservation is that continuous agency of God by which he maintains in
existence the things he has created, together with the properties and
powers with which he has endowed them. As the doctrine of creation is our
attempt to explain the existence of the universe, so the doctrine of
Preservation is our attempt to explain its continuance.

In explanation we remark:

(_a_) Preservation is not creation, for preservation presupposes creation.
That which is preserved must already exist, and must have come into
existence by the creative act of God.

(_b_) Preservation is not a mere negation of action, or a refraining to
destroy, on the part of God. It is a positive agency by which, at every
moment, he sustains the persons and the forces of the universe.

(_c_) Preservation implies a natural concurrence of God in all operations
of matter and of mind. Though personal beings exist and God’s will is not
the sole force, it is still true that, without his concurrence, no person
or force can continue to exist or to act.

Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2:40-42—“Creation and preservation
cannot be the same thing, for then man would be only the product
of natural forces supervised by God,—whereas, man is above nature
and is inexplicable from nature. Nature is not the whole of the
universe, but only the preliminary basis of it.... The _rest_ of
God is not cessation of activity, but is a new exercise of power.”
Nor is God “the soul of the universe.” This phrase is pantheistic,
and implies that God is the only agent.

It is a wonder that physical life continues. The pumping of blood
through the heart, whether we sleep or wake, requires an
expenditure of energy far beyond our ordinary estimates. The
muscle of the heart never rests except between the beats. All the
blood in the body passes through the heart in each half-minute.
The grip of the heart is greater than that of the fist. The two
ventricles of the heart hold on the average ten ounces or
five-eighths of a pound, and this amount is pumped out at each
beat. At 72 per minute, this is 45 pounds per minute, 2,700 pounds
per hour, and 64,800 pounds or 32 and four tenths tons per day.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 11:554—“The heart does about one-fifth of
the whole mechanical work of the body—a work equivalent to raising
its own weight over 13,000 feet an hour. It takes its rest only in
short snatches, as it were, its action as a whole being
continuous. It must necessarily be the earliest sufferer from any
improvidence as regards nutrition, mental emotion being in this
respect quite as potential a cause of constitutional bankruptcy as
the most violent muscular exertion.”

Before the days of the guillotine in France, when the criminal to
be executed sat in a chair and was decapitated by one blow of the
sharp sword, an observer declared that the blood spouted up
several feet into the air. Yet this great force is exerted by the
heart so noiselessly that we are for the most part unconscious of
it. The power at work is the power of God, and we call that
exercise of power by the name of preservation. Crane, Religion of
To-morrow, 130—“We do not get bread because God instituted certain
laws of growing wheat or of baking dough, he leaving these laws to
run of themselves. But God, personally present in the wheat, makes
it grow, and in the dough turns it into bread. He does not make
gravitation or cohesion, but these are phases of his present
action. Spirit is the reality, matter and law are the modes of its
expression. So in redemption it is not by the working of some
perfect plan that God saves. He is the immanent God, and all of
his benefits are but phases of his person and immediate
influence.”

II. Proof of the Doctrine of Preservation.

1. From Scripture.

In a number of Scripture passages, preservation is expressly distinguished
from creation. Though God rested from his work of creation and established
an order of natural forces, a special and continuous divine activity is
declared to be put forth in the upholding of the universe and its powers.
This divine activity, moreover, is declared to be the activity of Christ;
as he is the mediating agent in creation, so he is the mediating agent in
preservation.

_Nehemiah 9:6_—“_Thou art Jehovah, even thou alone; thou hast made
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and
all things that are thereon, the seas and all that is in them, and
thou preservest them all_”; _Job 7:20_—“_O thou watcher_ [marg.
“preserver”] _of men!_”; _Ps. 36:6_—“_thou preservest man and
beast_”; _104:29, 30_—“_Thou takest away their breath, they die,
And return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are
created, And thou renewest the face of the ground._” See Perowne
on _Ps. 104_—“A psalm to the God who is in and with nature for
good.” Humboldt, Cosmos, 2:413—“Psalm 104 presents an image of the
whole Cosmos.” _Acts 17:28_—“_in him we live, and move, and have
our being_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_in him all things consist_”; _Heb. 1:2,
3_—“_upholding all things by the word of his power._” _John
5:17_—“_My Father worketh even until now, and I work_”—refers most
naturally to preservation, since creation is a work completed;
compare _Gen. 2:2_—“_on the seventh day God finished his work
which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his
work which he had made._” God is the upholder of physical life;
see _Ps. 66:8, 9_—“_O bless our God ... who holdeth our soul in
life._” God is also the upholder of spiritual life; see _1 Tim.
6:13_—“_I charge thee in the sight of God who preserveth all
things alive_” (ζωογονοῦντος τὰ πάντα)—the great Preserver enables
us to persist in our Christian course. _Mat. 4:4_—“_Man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God_”—though originally referring to physical nourishment
is equally true of spiritual sustentation. In _Ps. 104:26_—“_There
go the ships,_” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution, thinks the
reference is not to man’s works but to God’s, as the parallelism:
“There is leviathan” would indicate, and that by “ships” are meant
“floaters” like the nautilus, which is a “little ship.” The 104th
Psalm is a long hymn to the preserving power of God, who keeps
alive all the creatures of the deep, both small and great.

2. From Reason.

We may argue the preserving agency of God from the following
considerations:

(_a_) Matter and mind are not self-existent. Since they have not the cause
of their being in themselves, their continuance as well as their origin
must be due to a superior power.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre: “Were the world self-existent, it would be
God, not world, and no religion would be possible.... The world
has receptivity for new creations; but these, once introduced, are
subject, like the rest, to the law of preservation”—_i. e._, are
dependent for their continued existence upon God.

(_b_) Force implies a will of which it is the direct or indirect
expression. We know of force only through the exercise of our own wills.
Since will is the only cause of which we have direct knowledge, second
causes in nature may be regarded as only secondary, regular, and automatic
workings of the great first Cause.

For modern theories identifying force with divine will, see
Herschel, Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 460; Murphy,
Scientific Bases, 13-15, 29-36, 42-52; Duke of Argyll, Reign of
Law, 121-127; Wallace, Natural Selection, 363-371; Bowen,
Metaphysics and Ethics, 146-162; Martineau, Essays, 1:63, 265, and
Study, 1:244—“Second causes in nature bear the same relation to
the First Cause as the automatic movement of the muscles in
walking bears to the first decision of the will that initiated the
walk.” It is often objected that we cannot thus identify force
with will, because in many cases the effort of our will is
fruitless for the reason that nervous and muscular force is
lacking. But this proves only that force cannot be identified with
human will, not that it cannot be identified with the divine will.
To the divine will no force is lacking; in God will and force are
one.

We therefore adopt the view of Maine de Biran, that causation
pertains only to spirit. Porter, Human Intellect, 582-588, objects
to this view as follows: “This implies, first, that the conception
of a material cause is self-contradictory. But the mind recognizes
in itself spiritual energies that are not voluntary; because we
derive our notion of cause from will, it does not follow that the
causal relation always involves will; it would follow that the
universe, so far as it is not intelligent, is impossible. It
implies, secondly, that there is but one agent in the universe,
and that the phenomena of matter and mind are but manifestations
of one single force—the Creator’s.” We reply to this reasoning by
asserting that no dead thing can act, and that what we call
involuntary spiritual energies are really unconscious or
unremembered activities of the will.

From our present point of view we would also criticize Hodge,
Systematic Theology, 1:596—“Because we get our idea of force from
mind, it does not follow that mind is the only force. That mind is
a cause is no proof that electricity may not be a cause. If matter
is force and nothing but force, then matter is nothing, and the
external world is simply God. In spite of such argument, men will
believe that the external world is a reality—that matter is, and
that it is the cause of the effects we attribute to its agency.”
New Englander, Sept. 1883:552—“Man in early time used second
causes, _i. e._, machines, very little to accomplish his purposes.
His usual mode of action was by the direct use of his hands, or
his voice, and he naturally ascribed to the gods the same method
as his own. His own use of second causes has led man to higher
conceptions of the divine action.” Dorner: “If the world had no
independence, it would not reflect God, nor would creation mean
anything.” But this independence is not absolute. Even man lives,
moves and has his being in God (_Acts 17:28_), and whatever has
come into being, whether material or spiritual, has life only in
Christ (_John 1:3, 4_, marginal reading).

Preservation is God’s continuous willing. Bowne, Introd. to Psych.
Theory, 305, speaks of “a kind of wholesale willing.” Augustine:
“Dei voluntas est rerum natura.” Principal Fairbairn: “Nature is
spirit.” Tennyson, The Ancient Sage: “Force is from the heights.”
Lord Gifford, quoted in Max Müller, Anthropological Religion,
392—“The human soul is neither self-derived nor self-subsisting.
It would vanish if it had not a substance, and its substance is
God.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 284, 285—“Matter is simply spirit
in its lowest form of manifestation. The absolute Cause must be
that deeper Self which we find at the heart of our own
self-consciousness. By self-differentiation God creates both
matter and mind.”

(_c_) God’s sovereignty requires a belief in his special preserving
agency; since this sovereignty would not be absolute, if anything occurred
or existed independent of his will.

James Martineau, Seat of Authority, 29, 30—“All cosmic force is
will.... This identification of nature with God’s will _would_ be
pantheistic only _if_ we turned the proposition round and
identified God with _no more_ than the life of the universe. But
we do not deny transcendency. Natural forces are God’s will, but
God’s will _is_ more than they. He is not the equivalent of the
All, but its directing Mind. God is not the rage of the wild
beast, nor the sin of man. There are things and beings objective
to him.... He puts his power into that which is _other than
himself_, and he parts with _other use of it_ by preëngagement to
an end. Yet he is the continuous source and supply of power to the
system.”

Natural forces are generic volitions of God. But human wills, with
their power of alternative, are the product of God’s
self-limitation, even more than nature is, for human wills do not
always obey the divine will,—they may even oppose it. Nothing
finite is only finite. In it is the Infinite, not only as
immanent, but also as transcendent, and in the case of sin, as
opposing the sinner and as punishing him. This continuous willing
of God has its analogy in our own subconscious willing. J. M.
Whiton, in Am. Jour. Theol., Apl. 1901:320—“Our own will, when we
walk, does not put forth a separate volition for every step, but
depends on the automatic action of the lower nerve-centres, which
it both sets in motion and keeps to their work. So the divine Will
does not work in innumerable separate acts of volition.” A. R.
Wallace: “The whole universe is not merely dependent on, but
actually _is_, the will of higher intelligences or of one supreme
intelligence.... Man’s free will is only a larger artery for the
controlling current of the universal Will, whose time-long
evolutionary flow constitutes the self-revelation of the Infinite
One.” This latter statement of Wallace merges the finite will far
too completely in the will of God. It is true of nature and of all
holy beings, but it is untrue of the wicked. These are indeed
upheld by God in their being, but opposed by God in their conduct.
Preservation leaves room for human freedom, responsibility, sin,
and guilt.

All natural forces and all personal beings therefore give
testimony to the will of God which originated them and which
continually sustains them. The physical universe, indeed, is in no
sense independent of God, for its forces are only the constant
willing of God, and its laws are only the habits of God. Only in
the free will of intelligent beings has God disjoined from himself
any portion of force and made it capable of contradicting his holy
will. But even in free agents God does not cease to uphold. The
being that sins can maintain its existence only through the
preserving agency of God. The doctrine of preservation therefore
holds a middle ground between two extremes. It holds that finite
personal beings have a real existence and a relative independence.
On the other hand it holds that these persons retain their being
and their powers only as they are upheld by God.

God is the soul, but not the sum, of things. Christianity holds to
God’s transcendence as well as to God’s immanence. Immanence alone
is God imprisoned, as transcendence alone is God banished. Gore,
Incarnation, 136 _sq._—“Christian theology is the harmony of
pantheism and deism.” It maintains transcendence, and so has all
the good of pantheism without its limitations. It maintains
immanence, and so has all the good of deism without its inability
to show how God could be blessed without creation. Diman, Theistic
Argument, 367—“The dynamical theory of nature as a plastic
organism, pervaded by a system of forces uniting at last in one
supreme Force, is altogether more in harmony with the spirit and
teaching of the Gospel than the mechanical conceptions which
prevailed a century ago, which insisted on viewing nature as an
intricate machine, fashioned by a great Artificer who stood wholly
apart from it.” On the persistency of force, _super cuncta_,
_subter cuncta_, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1881:1-24; Cocker, Theistic
Conception of the World, 172-243, esp. 236. The doctrine of
preservation therefore holds to a God both in nature and beyond
nature. According as the one or the other of these elements is
exclusively regarded, we have the error of Deism, or the error of
Continuous Creation—theories which we now proceed to consider.

III. Theories which virtually deny the doctrine of Preservation.

1. Deism.

This view represents the universe as a self-sustained mechanism, from
which God withdrew as soon as he had created it, and which he left to a
process of self-development. It was held in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries by the English Herbert, Collins, Tindal, and Bolingbroke.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury was one of the first who formed deism
into a system. His book _De Veritate_ was published in 1624. He
argues against the probability of God’s revealing his will to only
a portion of the earth. This he calls “particular religion.” Yet
he sought, and according to his own account he received, a
revelation from heaven to encourage the publication of his work in
disproof of revelation. He “asked for a sign,” and was answered by
a “loud though gentle noise from the heavens.” He had the vanity
to think his book of such importance to the cause of truth as to
extort a declaration of the divine will, when the interests of
half mankind could not secure any revelation at all; what God
would not do for a nation, he would do for an individual. See
Leslie and Leland, Method with the Deists. Deism is the
exaggeration of the truth of God’s transcendence. See Christlieb,
Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, 190-209. Melanchthon
illustrates by the shipbuilder: “Ut faber discedit a navi
exstructa et relinquit eam nautis.” God is the maker, not the
keeper, of the watch. In Sartor Resartus, Carlyle makes
Teufelsdröckh speak of “An absentee God, sitting idle ever since
the first Sabbath at the outside of the universe, and seeing it
go.” Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.: Deism.

“Deism emphasized the inviolability of natural law, and held to a
mechanical view of the world” (Ten Broeke). Its God is a sort of
Hindu Brahma, “as idle as a painted ship upon a painted
ocean”—mere being, without content or movement. Bruce,
Apologetics, 115-131—“God made the world so good at the first that
the best he can do is to let it alone. Prayer is inadmissible.
Deism implies a Pelagian view of human nature. Death redeems us by
separating us from the body. There is natural immortality, but no
resurrection. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the brother of the poet
George Herbert of Bemerton, represents the rise of Deism; Lord
Bolingbroke its decline. Blount assailed the divine Person of the
founder of the faith; Collins its foundation in prophecy; Woolston
its miraculous attestation; Toland its canonical literature.
Tindal took more general ground, and sought to show that a special
revelation was unnecessary, impossible, unverifiable, the religion
of nature being sufficient and superior to all religions of
positive institution.”

We object to this view that:

(_a_) It rests upon a false analogy.—Man is able to construct a
self-moving watch only because he employs preëxisting forces, such as
gravity, elasticity, cohesion. But in a theory which likens the universe
to a machine, these forces are the very things to be accounted for.

Deism regards the universe as a “perpetual motion.” Modern views
of the dissipation of energy have served to discredit it. Will is
the only explanation of the forces in nature. But according to
deism, God builds a house, shuts himself out, locks the door, and
then ties his own hands in order to make sure of never using the
key. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 114-138—“A made
mind, a spiritual nature created by an external omnipotence, is an
impossible and self-contradictory notion.... The human contriver
or artist deals with materials prepared to his hand. Deism reduces
God to a finite anthropomorphic personality, as pantheism annuls
the finite world or absorbs it in the Infinite.” Hence Spinoza,
the pantheist, was the great antagonist of 16th century deism. See
Woods, Works, 2:40.

(_b_) It is a system of anthropomorphism, while it professes to exclude
anthropomorphism.—Because the upholding of all things would involve a
multiplicity of minute cares if man were the agent, it conceives of the
upholding of the universe as involving such burdens in the case of God.
Thus it saves the dignity of God by virtually denying his omnipresence,
omniscience, and omnipotence.

The infinity of God turns into sources of delight all that would
seem care to man. To God’s inexhaustible fulness of life there are
no burdens involved in the upholding of the universe he has
created. Since God, moreover, is a perpetual observer, we may
alter the poet’s verse and say: “There’s not a flower that’s born
to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” God
does not expose his children as soon as they are born. They are
not only his offspring; they also live, move and have their being
in him, and are partakers of his divine nature. Gordon, Christ of
To-day, 200—“The worst person in all history is something to God,
if he be nothing to the world.” See Chalmers, Astronomical
Discourses, in Works, 7:68. Kurtz, The Bible and Astronomy, in
Introd. to History of Old Covenant, lxxxii-xcviii.

(_c_) It cannot be maintained without denying all providential
interference, in the history of creation and the subsequent history of the
world.—But the introduction of life, the creation of man, incarnation,
regeneration, the communion of intelligent creatures with a present God,
and interpositions of God in secular history, are matters of fact.

Deism therefore continually tends to atheism. Upton, Hibbert
Lectures, 287—“The defect of deism is that, on the human side, it
treats all men as isolated individuals, forgetful of the immanent
divine nature which interrelates them and in a measure unifies
them; and that, on the divine side, it separates men from God and
makes the relation between them a purely external one.” Ruskin:
“The divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on
every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the
pillars of heaven and settling the foundations of the earth; and
to the rightly perceiving mind there is the same majesty, the same
power, the same unity, and the same perfection manifested in the
casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the
mouldering of dust as in the kindling of the day-star.” See
Pearson, Infidelity, 87; Hanne, Idee der absoluten Persönlichkeit,
76.

2. Continuous Creation.

This view regards the universe as from moment to moment the result of a
new creation. It was held by the New England theologians Edwards, Hopkins,
and Emmons, and more recently in Germany by Rothe.

Edwards, Works, 2:486-490, quotes and defends Dr. Taylor’s
utterance: “God is the original of all being, and the only cause
of all natural effects.” Edwards himself says: “God’s upholding
created substance, or causing its existence in each successive
moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of
nothing at each moment.” He argues that the past existence of a
thing cannot be the cause of its present existence, because a
thing cannot act at a time and place where it is not. “This is
equivalent to saying that God cannot produce an effect which shall
last for one moment beyond the direct exercise of his creative
power. What man can do, God, it seems, cannot” (A. S. Carman).
Hopkins, Works, 1:164-167—Preservation “is really continued
creation.” Emmons, Works, 4:363-389, esp. 381—“Since all men are
dependent agents, all their motions, exercises, or actions must
originate in a divine efficiency.” 2:683—“There is but one true
and satisfactory answer to the question which has been agitated
for centuries: ‘Whence came evil?’ and that is: It came from the
first great Cause of all things.... It is as consistent with the
moral rectitude of the Deity to produce sinful as holy exercises
in the minds of men. He puts forth a positive influence to make
moral agents act, in every instance of their conduct, as he
pleases.” God therefore creates all the volitions of the soul, as
he effects by his almighty power all the changes of the material
world. Rothe also held this view. To his mind external expression
is necessary to God. His maxim was: “Kein Gott ohne Welt”—“There
can be no God without an accompanying world.” See Rothe, Dogmatik,
1:126-160, esp. 150, and Theol. Ethik, 1:186-190; also in Bib.
Sac., Jan. 1875:144. See also Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 81-94.

The element of truth in Continuous Creation is its assumption that
all force is will. Its error is in maintaining that all force is
_divine_ will, and divine will in _direct_ exercise. But the human
will is a force as well as the divine will, and the forces of
nature are secondary and automatic, not primary and immediate,
workings of God. These remarks may enable us to estimate the grain
of truth in the following utterances which need important
qualification and limitation. Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 202,
likens the universe to the musical note, which exists only on
condition of being incessantly reproduced. Herbert Spencer says
that “ideas are like the successive chords and cadences brought
out from a piano, which successively die away as others are
produced.” Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, quotes this passage, but
asks quite pertinently: “What about the performer, in the case of
the piano and in the case of the brain, respectively? Where in the
brain is the equivalent of the harmonic conceptions in the
performer’s mind?” Professor Fitzgerald: “All nature is living
thought—the language of One in whom we live and move and have our
being.” Dr. Oliver Lodge, to the British Association in 1891: “The
barrier between matter and mind may melt away, as so many others
have done.”

To this we object, upon the following grounds:

(_a_) It contradicts the testimony of consciousness that regular and
executive activity is not the mere repetition of an initial decision, but
is an exercise of the will entirely different in kind.

Ladd, in his Philosophy of Mind, 144, indicates the error in
Continuous Creation as follows: “The whole world of things is
momently quenched and then replaced by a similar world of actually
new realities.” The words of the poet would then be literally
true: “Every fresh and new creation, A divine improvisation, From
the heart of God proceeds.” Ovid, Metaph., 1:16—“Instabilis
tellus, innabilis unda.” Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, 60,
says that, to Fichte, “the world was thus perpetually created anew
in each finite spirit,—revelation to intelligence being the only
admissible meaning of that much abused term, creation.” A. L.
Moore, Science and the Faith, 184, 185—“A theory of occasional
intervention implies, as its correlate, a theory of ordinary
absence.... For Christians the facts of nature are the acts of
God. Religion relates these facts to God as their author; science
relates them to one another as parts of a visible order. Religion
does not tell of this interrelation; science cannot tell of their
relation to God.”

Continuous creation is an erroneous theory because it applies to
human wills a principle which is true only of irrational nature
and which is only partially true of that. I know that I am not God
acting. My will is proof that not all force is divine will. Even
on the monistic view, moreover, we may speak of second causes in
nature, since God’s regular and habitual action is a second and
subsequent thing, while his act of initiation and organization is
the first. Neither the universe nor any part of it is to be
identified with God, any more than my thoughts and acts are to be
identified with me. Martineau, in Nineteenth Century, April,
1895:559—“What is _nature_, but the promise of God’s pledged and
habitual causality? And what is _spirit_, but the province of his
free causality responding to needs and affections of his free
children?... God is not a retired architect who may now and then
be called in for repairs. Nature is not self-active, and God’s
agency is not intrusive.” William Watson, Poems, 88—“If nature be
a phantasm, as thou say’st, A splendid fiction and prodigious
dream, To reach the real and true I’ll make no haste, More than
content with worlds that only seem.”

(_b_) It exaggerates God’s power only by sacrificing his truth, love, and
holiness;—for if finite personalities are not what they seem—namely,
objective existences—God’s veracity is impugned; if the human soul has no
real freedom and life, God’s love has made no self-communication to
creatures; if God’s will is the only force in the universe, God’s holiness
can no longer be asserted, for the divine will must in that case be
regarded as the author of human sin.

Upon this view personal identity is inexplicable. Edwards bases
identity upon the arbitrary decree of God. God can therefore, by
so decreeing, make Adam’s posterity one with their first father
and responsible for his sin. Edwards’s theory of continuous
creation, indeed, was devised as an explanation of the problem of
original sin. The divinely appointed union of acts and exercises
with Adam was held sufficient, without union of substance, or
natural generation from him, to explain our being born corrupt and
guilty. This view would have been impossible, if Edwards had not
been an idealist, making far too much of acts and exercises and
far too little of substance.

It is difficult to explain the origin of Jonathan Edwards’s
idealism. It has sometimes been attributed to the reading of
Berkeley. Dr. Samuel Johnson, afterwards President of King’s
College in New York City, a personal friend of Bishop Berkeley and
an ardent follower of his teaching, was a tutor in Yale College
while Edwards was a student. But Edwards was in Weathersfield
while Johnson remained in New Haven, and was among those
disaffected towards Johnson as a tutor. Yet Edwards, Original Sin,
479, seems to allude to the Berkeleyan philosophy when he says:
“The course of nature is demonstrated by recent improvements in
philosophy to be indeed ... nothing but the established order and
operation of the Author of nature” (see Allen, Jonathan Edwards,
16, 308, 309). President McCracken, in Philos. Rev., Jan.
1892:26-42, holds that Arthur Collier’s Clavis Universalis is the
source of Edwards’s idealism. It is more probable that his
idealism was the result of his own independent thinking,
occasioned perhaps by mere hints from Locke, Newton, Cudworth, and
Norris, with whose writings he certainly was acquainted. See E. C.
Smyth, in Am. Jour. Theol., Oct. 1897:956; Prof. Gardiner, in
Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596.

How thorough-going this idealism of Edwards was may be learned
from Noah Porter’s Discourse on Bishop George Berkeley, 71, and
quotations from Edwards, in Journ. Spec. Philos., Oct.
1883:401-420—“Nothing else has a proper being but spirits, and
bodies are but the shadow of being.... Seeing the brain exists
only mentally, I therefore acknowledge that I speak improperly
when I say that the soul is in the brain only, as to its
operations. For, to speak yet more strictly and abstractedly, ’tis
nothing but the connection of the soul with these and those modes
of its own ideas, or those mental acts of the Deity, seeing the
brain exists only in idea.... That which truly is the substance of
all bodies is the infinitely exact and precise and perfectly
stable idea in God’s mind, together with his stable will that the
same shall be gradually communicated to us and to other minds
according to certain fixed and established methods and laws; or,
in somewhat different language, the infinitely exact and precise
divine idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact,
precise, and stable will, with respect to correspondent
communications to created minds and effects on those minds.” It is
easy to see how, from this view of Edwards, the “Exercise-system”
of Hopkins and Emmons naturally developed itself. On Edwards’s
Idealism, see Frazer’s Berkeley (Blackwood’s Philos. Classics),
139, 140. On personal identity, see Bp. Butler, Works (Bohn’s
ed.), 327-334.

(_c_) As deism tends to atheism, so the doctrine of continuous creation
tends to pantheism.—Arguing that, because we get our notion of force from
the action of our own wills, therefore all force must be will, and divine
will, it is compelled to merge the human will in this all-comprehending
will of God. Mind and matter alike become phenomena of one force, which
has the attributes of both; and, with the distinct existence and
personality of the human soul, we lose the distinct existence and
personality of God, as well as the freedom and accountability of man.

Lotze tries to escape from _material_ causes and yet hold to
_second_ causes, by intimating that these second causes may be
spirits. But though we can see how there can be a sort of spirit
in the brute and in the vegetable, it is hard to see how what we
call insensate matter can have spirit in it. It must be a very
peculiar sort of spirit—a deaf and dumb spirit, if any—and such a
one does not help our thinking. On this theory the body of a dog
would need to be much more highly endowed than its soul. James
Seth, in Philos. Rev., Jan. 1894:73—“This principle of unity is a
veritable lion’s den,—all the footprints are in one direction.
Either it is a bare unity—the One annuls the many; or it is simply
the All,—the ununified totality of existence.” Dorner well remarks
that “Preservation is empowering of the creature and maintenance
of its activity, not new bringing it into being.” On the whole
subject, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:220-225; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 2:258-272; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 50; Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 1:577-581, 595; Dabney, Theology, 338, 339.

IV. Remarks upon the Divine Concurrence.

(_a_) The divine efficiency interpenetrates that of man without destroying
or absorbing it. The influx of God’s sustaining energy is such that men
retain their natural faculties and powers. God does not work all, but all
in all.

Preservation, then, is midway between the two errors of denying
the first cause (deism or atheism) and denying the second causes
(continuous creation or pantheism). _1 Cor. 12:6_—“_there are
diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things
in all_”; _cf._ _Eph. 1:23_—the church, “_which is his body, the
fulness of him that filleth all in all_.” God’s action is no
_actio in distans_, or action where he is not. It is rather action
in and through free agents, in the case of intelligent and moral
beings, while it is his own continuous willing in the case of
nature. Men are second causes in a sense in which nature is not.
God works through these human second causes, but he does not
supersede them. We cannot see the line between the two—the action
of the first cause and the action of second causes; yet both are
real, and each is distinct from the other, though the method of
God’s concurrence is inscrutable. As the pen and the hand together
produce the writing, so God’s working causes natural powers to
work with him. The natural growth indicated by the words “_wherein
is the seed thereof_” (_Gen. 1:11_) has its counterpart in the
spiritual growth described in the words “_his seed abideth in
him_” (_1 John 3:9_). Paul considers himself a reproductive agency
in the hands of God: he begets children in the gospel (_1 Cor.
4:15_); yet the New Testament speaks of this begetting as the work
of God (_1 Pet. 1:3_). We are bidden to work out our own salvation
with fear and trembling, upon the very ground that it is God who
works in us both to will and to work (_Phil. 2:12, 13_).

(_b_) Though God preserves mind and body in their working, we are ever to
remember that God concurs with the evil acts of his creatures only as they
are natural acts, and not as they are evil.

In holy action God gives the natural powers, and by his word and
Spirit influences the soul to use these powers aright. But in evil
action God gives only the natural powers; the evil direction of
these powers is caused only by man. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this
abominable thing that I hate_”; _Hab. 1:13_—“_Thou that art of
purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on
perverseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal
treacherously, and holdest thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up
the man that is more righteous than he?_” _James 1:13, 14_—“_Let
no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot
be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man: but each man
is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed._”
Aaron excused himself for making an Egyptian idol by saying that
the fire did it; he asked the people for gold; “_so they gave it
me; and I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf_”
(_Ex. 32:24_). Aaron leaves out one important point—his own
personal agency in it all. In like manner we lay the blame of our
sins upon nature and upon God. Pym said of Strafford that God had
given him great talents, of which the devil had given the
application. But it is more true to say of the wicked man that he
himself gives the application of his God-given powers. We are
electric cars for which God furnishes the motive-power, but to
which we the conductors give the direction. We are organs; the
wind or breath of the organ is God’s; but the fingering of the
keys is ours. Since the maker of the organ is also present at
every moment as its preserver, the shameful abuse of his
instrument and the dreadful music that is played are a continual
grief and suffering to his soul. Since it is Christ who upholds
all things by the word of his power, preservation involves the
suffering of Christ, and this suffering is his atonement, of which
the culmination and demonstration are seen in the cross of Calvary
(_Heb. 1:3_). On the importance of the idea of preservation in
Christian doctrine, see Calvin, Institutes, 1:182 (chapter 16).

Section III.—Providence.

I. Definition of Providence.

Providence is that continuous agency of God by which he makes all the
events of the physical and moral universe fulfill the original design with
which he created it.

As Creation explains the existence of the universe, and as Preservation
explains its continuance, so Providence explains its evolution and
progress.

In explanation notice:

(_a_) Providence is not to be taken merely in its etymological sense of
_fore_seeing. It is _for_seeing also, or a positive agency in connection
with all the events of history.

(_b_) Providence is to be distinguished from preservation. While
preservation is a maintenance of the existence and powers of created
things, providence is an actual care and control of them.

(_c_) Since the original plan of God is all-comprehending, the providence
which executes the plan is all-comprehending also, embracing within its
scope things small and great, and exercising care over individuals as well
as over classes.

(_d_) In respect to the good acts of men, providence embraces all those
natural influences of birth and surroundings which prepare men for the
operation of God’s word and Spirit, and which constitute motives to
obedience.

(_e_) In respect to the evil acts of men, providence is never the
efficient cause of sin, but is by turns preventive, permissive, directive,
and determinative.

(_f_) Since Christ is the only revealer of God, and he is the medium of
every divine activity, providence is to be regarded as the work of Christ;
see 1 Cor. 8:6—“one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”;
_cf._ John 5:17—“My Father worketh even until now, and I work.”

The Germans have the word _Fürsehung_, forseeing, looking out for,
as well as the word _Vorsehung_, foreseeing, seeing beforehand.
Our word “providence” embraces the meanings of both these words.
On the general subject of providence, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
2:272-284; Calvin, Institutes, 1:182-219; Dick, Theology,
1:416-446; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:581-616; Bib. Sac., 12:179;
21:584; 26:315; 30:593; N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2:294-326.

Providence is God’s attention concentrated everywhere. His care is
microscopic as well as telescopic. Robert Browning, Pippa Passes,
_ad finem_: “All service is the same with God—With God, whose
puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.”
Canon Farrar: “In one chapter of the Koran is the story how
Gabriel, as he waited by the gates of gold, was sent by God to
earth to do two things. One was to prevent king Solomon from the
sin of forgetting the hour of prayer in exultation over his royal
steeds; the other to help a little yellow ant on the slope of
Ararat, which had grown weary in getting food for its nest, and
which would otherwise perish in the rain. To Gabriel the one
behest seemed just as kingly as the other, since God had ordered
it. ‘Silently he left The Presence, and prevented the king’s sin,
And holp the little ant at entering in.’ ‘Nothing is too high or
low, Too mean or mighty, if God wills it so.’ ” Yet a preacher
began his sermon on Mat. 10:30—“The very hairs of your head are
are all numbered”—by saying: “Why, some of you, my hearers, do not
believe that even your heads are all numbered!”

A modern prophet of unbelief in God’s providence is William
Watson. In his poem entitled The Unknown God, we read: “When
overarched by gorgeous night, I wave my trivial self away; When
all I was to all men’s sight Shares the erasure of the day: Then
do I cast my cumbering load, Then do I gain a sense of God.” Then
he likens the God of the Old Testament to Odin and Zeus, and
continues: “O streaming worlds, O crowded sky, O life, and mine
own soul’s abyss, Myself am scarce so small that I Should bow to
Deity like this! This my Begetter? This was what Man in his
violent youth begot. The God I know of I shall ne’er Know, though
he dwells exceeding nigh. Raise thou the stone and find me there.
Cleave thou the wood and there am I. Yea, in my flesh his Spirit
doth flow, Too near, too far, for me to know. Whate’er my deeds, I
am not sure That I can pleasure him or vex: I, that must use a
speech so poor It narrows the Supreme with sex. Notes he the good
or ill in man? To hope he cares is all I can. I hope with fear.
For did I trust This vision granted me at birth, The sire of
heaven would seem less just Than many a faulty son of earth. And
so he seems indeed! But then, I trust it not, this bounded ken.
And dreaming much, I never dare To dream that in my prisoned soul
The flutter of a trembling prayer Can move the Mind that is the
Whole. Though kneeling nations watch and yearn, Does the primeval
Purpose turn? Best by remembering God, say some. We keep our high
imperial lot. Fortune, I fear, hath oftenest come When we
forgot—when we forgot! A lovelier faith their happier crown, But
history laughs and weeps it down: Know they not well how seven
times seven, Wronging our mighty arms with rust, We dared not do
the work of heaven, Lest heaven should hurl us in the dust? The
work of heaven! ’Tis waiting still The sanction of the heavenly
will. Unmeet to be profaned by praise Is he whose coils the world
enfold; The God on whom I ever gaze, The God I never once behold:
Above the cloud, above the clod, The unknown God, the unknown
God.”

In pleasing contrast to William Watson’s Unknown God, is the God
of Rudyard Kipling’s Recessional: “God of our fathers, known of
old—Lord of our far-flung battle-line—Beneath whose awful hand we
hold Dominion over palm and pine—Lord God of hosts, be with us
yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting
dies—The captains and the kings depart—Still stands thine ancient
Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be
with us yet. Lest we forget—lest we forget! Far-called our navies
melt away—On dune and headland sinks the fire—So, all our pomp of
yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the nations,
spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! If, drunk with sight
of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not thee in awe—Such
boasting as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the
Law—Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we
forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and
iron shard—All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding
calls not thee to guard—For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy
mercy on thy people, Lord!”

These problems of God’s providential dealings are intelligible
only when we consider that Christ is the revealer of God, and that
his suffering for sin opens to us the heart of God. All history is
the progressive manifestation of Christ’s holiness and love, and
in the cross we have the key that unlocks the secret of the
universe. With the cross in view, we can believe that Love rules
over all, and that “_all things work together for good to them
that love God._” (_Rom. 8:28_).

II. Proof of the Doctrine of Providence.

1. Scriptural Proof.

The Scripture witnesses to

A. A general providential government and control (_a_) over the universe
at large; (_b_) over the physical world; (_c_) over the brute creation;
(_d_) over the affairs of nations; (_e_) over man’s birth and lot in life;
(_f_) over the outward successes and failures of men’s lives; (_g_) over
things seemingly accidental or insignificant; (_h_) in the protection of
the righteous; (_i_) in the supply of the wants of God’s people; (_j_) in
the arrangement of answers to prayer; (_k_) in the exposure and punishment
of the wicked.

(_a_) _Ps. 103:19_—“_his kingdom ruleth over all_”; _Dan.
4:35_—“_doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and
among the inhabitants of the earth_”; _Eph. 1:11_—“_worketh all
things after the counsel of his will._”

(_b_) _Job 37:5, 10_—“_God thundereth ... By the breath of God ice
is given_”; _Ps. 104:14_—“_causeth the grass to grow for the
cattle_”; _135:6, 7_—“_Whatsoever Jehovah pleased, that hath he
done, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps ...
vapors ... lightnings ... wind_”; _Mat. 5:45_—“_maketh his sun to
rise ... sendeth rain_”; _Ps. 104:16_—“_The trees of Jehovah are
filled_”—are planted and tended by God as carefully as those which
come under human cultivation; _cf._ _Mat. 6:30_—“_if God so clothe
the grass of the field._”

(_c_) _Ps. 104:21, 28_—“_young lions roar ... seek their food from
God ... that thou givest them they gather_”; _Mat. 6:26_—“_birds
of the heaven ... your heavenly Father feedeth them_”;
_10:29_—“_two sparrows ... not one of them shall fall on the
ground without your Father._”

(_d_) _Job 12:23_—“_He increaseth the nations, and he destroyeth
them: He enlargeth the nations, and he leadeth them captive_”;
_Ps. 22:28_—“_the kingdom is Jehovah’s; And he is the ruler over
the nations_”; _66:7_—“_He ruleth by his might for ever; His eyes
observe the nations_”; _Acts 17:26_—“_made of one every nation of
men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their
appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation_” (instance
Palestine, Greece, England).

(_e_) _1 Sam. 16:1_—“_fill thy horn with oil, and go: I will send
thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king
among his sons_”; _Ps. 139:16_—“_Thine eyes did see mine unformed
substance, And in thy book were all my members written_”; _Is.
45:5_—“_I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me_”; _Jer.
1:5_—“_Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee ...
sanctified thee ... appointed thee_”; _Gal. 1:15, 16_—“_God, who
separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through
his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among
the Gentiles._”

(_f_) _Ps. 75:6, 7_—“_neither from the east, nor from the west,
Nor yet from the south cometh lifting up. But God is the judge, He
putteth down one, and lifteth up another_”; _Luke 1:52_—“_He hath
put down princes from their thrones, And hath exalted them of low
degree._”

(_g_) _Prov. 16:33_—“_The lot is cast into the lap; But the whole
disposing thereof is of Jehovah_”; _Mat. 10:30_—“_the very hairs
of your head are all numbered._”

(_h_) _Ps. 4:8_—“_In peace will I both lay me down and sleep; For
thou, Jehovah, alone makest me dwell in safety_”; _5:12_—“_thou
wilt compass him with favor as with a shield_”; _63:8_—“_Thy right
hand upholdeth me_”; _121:3_—“_He that keepeth thee will not
slumber_”; _Rom. 8:28_—“_to them that love God all things work
together for good._”

(_i_) _Gen. 22:8, 14_—“_God will provide himself the lamb ...
Jehovah-jireh_” (marg.: that is, “Jehovah will see,” or
“provide”); _Deut. 8:3_—“_man doth not live by bread only, but by
every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man
live_”; _Phil. 4:19_—“_my God shall supply every need of yours._”

(_j_) _Ps. 68:10_—“_Thou, O God, didst prepare of thy goodness for
the poor_”; _Is. 64:4_—“_neither hath the eye seen a God besides
thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him_”; _Mat.
6:8_—“_your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye
ask him_”; _32, 33_—“_all these things shall be added unto you._”

(_k_) _Ps. 7:12, 13_—“_If a man turn not, he will whet his sword;
He hath bent his bow and made it ready; He hath also prepared for
him the instruments of death; He maketh his arrows fiery shafts_”;
_11:6_—“_Upon the wicked he will rain snares; Fire and brimstone
and burning wind shall be the portion of their cup._”

The statements of Scripture with regard to God’s providence are strikingly
confirmed by recent studies in physiography. In the early stages of human
development man was almost wholly subject to nature, and environment was a
determining factor in his progress. This is the element of truth in
Buckle’s view. But Buckle ignored the fact that, as civilization advanced,
ideas, at least at times, played a greater part than environment.
Thermopylæ cannot be explained by climate. In the later stages of human
development, nature is largely subject to man, and environment counts for
comparatively little. “There shall be no Alps!” says Napoleon. Charles
Kingsley: “The spirit of ancient tragedy was man conquered by
circumstance; the spirit of modern tragedy is man conquering
circumstance.” Yet many national characteristics can be attributed to
physical surroundings, and so far as this is the case they are due to the
ordering of God’s providence. Man’s need of fresh water leads him to
rivers,—hence the original location of London. Commerce requires
seaports,—hence New York. The need of defense leads man to bluffs and
hills,—hence Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. These places of defense
became also places of worship and of appeal to God.

Goldwin Smith, in his Lectures and Essays, maintains that national
characteristics are not congenital, but are the result of environment. The
greatness of Rome and the greatness of England have been due to position.
The Romans owed their successes to being at first less warlike than their
neighbors. They were traders in the centre of the Italian seacoast, and
had to depend on discipline to make headway against marauders on the
surrounding hills. Only when drawn into foreign conquest did the
ascendency of the military spirit become complete, and then the military
spirit brought despotism as its natural penalty. Brought into contact with
varied races, Rome was led to the founding of colonies. She adopted and
assimilated the nations which she conquered, and in governing them learned
organization and law. _Parcere subjectis_ was her rule, as well as
_debellare superbos_. In a similiar manner Goldwin Smith maintains that
the greatness of England is due to position. Britain being an island, only
a bold and enterprising race could settle it. Maritime migration
strengthened freedom. Insular position gave freedom from invasion.
Isolation however gave rise to arrogance and self-assertion. The island
became a natural centre of commerce. There is a steadiness of political
progress which would have been impossible upon the continent. Yet
consolidation was tardy, owing to the fact that Great Britain consists of
_several_ islands. Scotland was always liberal, and Ireland foredoomed to
subjection.

Isaac Taylor, Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, has a valuable chapter on Palestine
as the providential theatre of divine revelation. A little land, yet a
sample-land of all lands, and a thoroughfare between the greatest lands of
antiquity, it was fitted by God to receive and to communicate his truth.
George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land is a repertory
of information on this subject. Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:269-271,
treats of Greek landscape and history. Shaler, Interpretation of Nature,
sees such difference between Greek curiosity and search for causes on the
one hand, and Roman indifference to scientific explanation of facts on the
other, that he cannot think of the Greeks and the Romans as cognate
peoples. He believes that Italy was first peopled by Etrurians, a Semitic
race from Africa, and that from them the Romans descended. The Romans had
as little of the spirit of the naturalist as had the Hebrews. The Jews and
the Romans originated and propagated Christianity, but they had no
interest in science.

On God’s pre-arrangement of the physical conditions of national life,
striking suggestions may be found in Shaler, Nature and Man in America.
Instance the settlement of Massachusetts Bay between 1629 and 1639, the
only decade in which such men as John Winthrop could be found and the only
one in which they actually emigrated from England. After 1639 there was
too much to do at home, and with Charles II the spirit which animated the
Pilgrims no longer existed in England. The colonists builded better than
they knew, for though they sought a place to worship God themselves, they
had no idea of giving this same religious liberty to others. R. E.
Thompson, The Hand of God in American History, holds that the American
Republic would long since have broken in pieces by its own weight and
bulk, if the invention of steam-boat in 1807, railroad locomotive in 1829,
telegraph in 1837, and telephone in 1877, had not bound the remote parts
of the country together. A woman invented the reaper by combining the
action of a row of scissors in cutting. This was as early as 1835. Only in
1855 the competition on the Emperor’s farm at Compiègne gave supremacy to
the reaper. Without it farming would have been impossible during our civil
war, when our men were in the field and women and boys had to gather in
the crops.

B. A government and control extending to the free actions of men—(_a_) to
men’s free acts in general; (_b_) to the sinful acts of men also.

(a) _Ex. 12:36_—“_Jehovah gave the people favor in the sight of
the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And
they despoiled the Egyptians_”; _1 Sam. 24:18_—“_Jehovah had
delivered me up into thy hand_” (Saul to David); _Ps. 33:14,
15_—“_He looketh forth Upon all the inhabitants of the earth, He
that fashioneth the hearts of them all_” (_i. e._, equally, one as
well as another); _Prov. 16:1_—“_The plans of the heart belong to
man; But the answer of the tongue is from Jehovah_”;
_19:21_—“_There are many devices in a man’s heart; But the counsel
of Jehovah, __ that shall stand_”; _20:24_—“_A man’s goings are of
Jehovah; How then can man understand his way?_” _21:1_—“_The
king’s heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses: He
turneth it whithersoever he will_” (_i. e._, as easily as the
rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion
of the hand or the foot of the husbandman); _Jer. 10:23_—“_O
Jehovah, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not
in man that walketh to direct his steps_”; _Phil. 2:13_—“_it is
God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasure_”; _Eph. 2:10_—“_we are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we
should walk in them_”; _James 4:13-15_—“_If the Lord will, we
shall both live, and do this or that._”

(_b_) _2 Sam. 16:10_—“_because Jehovah hath said unto him_
[Shimei]: _Curse David_”; _24:1_—“_the anger of Jehovah was
kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying,
Go, number Israel and Judah_”; _Rom. 11:32_—“_God hath shut up all
unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all_”; _2 Thess.
2:11, 12_—“_God sendeth them a working of error, that they should
believe a lie: that they all might be judged who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness._”

Henry Ward Beecher: “There seems to be no order in the movements
of the bees of a hive, but the honey-comb shows that there was a
plan in them all.” John Hunter compared his own brain to a hive in
which there was a great deal of buzzing and apparent disorder,
while yet a real order underlay it all. “As bees gather their
stores of sweets against a time of need, but are colonized by
man’s superior intelligence for his own purposes, so men plan and
work yet are overruled by infinite Wisdom for his own glory.” Dr.
Deems: “The world is wide In Time and Tide, And God is guide: Then
do not hurry. That man is blest Who does his best And leaves the
rest: Then do not worry.” See Bruce, Providential Order, 183
_sq._; Providence in the Individual Life, 231 _sq._

God’s providence with respect to men’s evil acts is described in Scripture
as of four sorts:

(_a_) Preventive,—God by his providence prevents sin which would otherwise
be committed. That he thus prevents sin is to be regarded as matter, not
of obligation, but of grace.

_Gen. 20:6_—Of Abimelech: “_I also withheld thee from sinning
against me_”; _31:24_—“_And God came to Laban the Syrian in a
dream of the night, and said unto him, Take heed to thyself that
thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad_”; _Psalm 19:13_—“_Keep
back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have
dominion over me_”; _Hosea 2:6_—“_Behold, I will hedge up thy way
with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she shall
not find her paths_”—here the “_thorns_” and the “_wall_” may
represent the restraints and sufferings by which God mercifully
checks the fatal pursuit of sin (see Annotated Par. Bible _in
loco_). Parents, government, church, traditions, customs, laws,
age, disease, death, are all of them preventive influences. Man
sometimes finds himself on the brink of a precipice of sin, and
strong temptation hurries him on to make the fatal leap. Suddenly
every nerve relaxes, all desire for the evil thing is gone, and he
recoils from the fearful brink over which he was just now going to
plunge. God has interfered by the voice of conscience and the
Spirit. This too is a part of his preventive providence. Men at
sixty years of age are eight times less likely to commit crime
than at the age of twenty-five. Passion has subsided; fear of
punishment has increased. The manager of a great department store,
when asked what could prevent its absorbing all the trade of the
city, replied: “Death!” Death certainly limits aggregations of
property, and so constitutes a means of God’s preventive
providence. In the life of John G. Paton, the rain sent by God
prevented the natives from murdering him and taking his goods.

(_b_) Permissive,—God permits men to cherish and to manifest the evil
dispositions of their hearts. God’s permissive providence is simply the
negative act of withholding impediments from the path of the sinner,
instead of preventing his sin by the exercise of divine power. It implies
no ignorance, passivity, or indulgence, but consists with hatred of the
sin and determination to punish it.

_2 Chron. 32:31_—“_God left him_ [Hezekiah], _to try him, that he
might know all that was in his heart_”; _cf._ _Deut. 8:2_—“_that
he might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine
heart._” _Ps. 17:13, 14_—“_Deliver my soul from the wicked, who is
thy sword, from men who are thy hand, O Jehovah_”; _Ps. 81:12,
13_—“_So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, That
they might walk in their own counsels. Oh that my people would
hearken unto me!_” _Is. 53:4, 10_—“_Surely he hath borne our
griefs.... Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him._” _Hosea
4:17_—“_Ephraim __ Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone_”;
_Acts 14:16_—“_who in the generations gone by suffered all the
nations to walk in their own ways_”; _Rom. 1:24, 28_—“_God gave
them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness... God gave
them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not
fitting_”; _3:25_—“_to show his righteousness, because of the
passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of
God._” To this head of permissive providence is possibly to be
referred _1 Sam. 18:10_—“_an evil spirit from God came mightily
upon Saul._” As the Hebrew writers saw in second causes the
operation of the great first Cause, and said: “_The God of glory
thundereth_” (_Ps. 29:3_), so, because even the acts of the wicked
entered into God’s plan, the Hebrew writers sometimes represented
God as doing what he merely permitted finite spirits to do. In _2
Sam. 24:1_, God moves David to number Israel, but in _1 Chron.
21:1_ the same thing is referred to Satan. God’s providence in
these cases, however, may be directive as well as permissive.

Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism: “God is law, say the wise; O Soul,
and let us rejoice, For if he thunder by law the thunder is yet
his voice.” Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 56—“The clear
separation of God’s efficiency from God’s permissive act was
reserved to a later day. All emphasis was in the Old Testament
laid upon the sovereign power of God.” Coleridge, in his
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, letter II, speaks of “the
habit, universal with the Hebrew doctors, of referring all
excellent or extraordinary things to the great first Cause,
without mention of the proximate and instrumental causes—a
striking illustration of which may be found by comparing the
narratives of the same events in the Psalms and in the historical
books.... The distinction between the providential and the
miraculous did not enter into their forms of thinking—at any rate,
not into their mode of conveying their thoughts.” The woman who
had been slandered rebelled when told that God had permitted it
for her good; she maintained that Satan had inspired her accuser;
she needed to learn that God had permitted the work of Satan.

(_c_) Directive,—God directs the evil acts of men to ends unforeseen and
unintended by the agents. When evil is in the heart and will certainly
come out, God orders its flow in one direction rather than in another, so
that its course can be best controlled and least harm may result. This is
sometimes called overruling providence.

_Gen. 50:20_—“_as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant
it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much
people alive_”; _Ps. 76:10_—“_the wrath of man shall praise thee:
The residue of wrath shalt thou gird upon thee_”—put on as an
ornament—clothe thyself with it for thine own glory; _Is.
10:5_—“_Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in whose
hand is mine indignation_”; _John 13:27_—“_What thou doest, do
quickly_”—do in a particular way what is actually being done
(Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_); _Acts 4:27, 28_—“_against thy
holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius
Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered
together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel fore-ordained
to come to pass._”

To this head of directive providence should probably be referred
the passages with regard to Pharaoh in _Ex. 4:21_—“_I will harden
his heart, and he will not let the people go_”; _7:13_—“_and
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened_”; _8:15_—“_he hardened his
heart_”—_i. e._, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Here the
controlling agency of God did not interfere with the liberty of
Pharaoh or oblige him to sin; but in judgment for his previous
cruelty and impiety God withdrew the external restraints which had
hitherto kept his sin within bounds, and placed him in
circumstances which would have influenced to right action a
well-disposed mind, but which God foresaw would lead a disposition
like Pharaoh’s to the peculiar course of wickedness which he
actually pursued.

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then, first, by permitting him to
harden his own heart, God being the author of his sin only in the
sense that he is the author of a free being who is himself the
direct author of his sin; secondly, by giving to him the means of
enlightenment, Pharaoh’s very opportunities being perverted by him
into occasions of more virulent wickedness, and good resisted
being thus made to result in greater evil; thirdly, by judicially
forsaking Pharaoh, when it became manifest that he would not do
God’s will, and thus making it morally certain, though not
necessary, that he would do evil; and fourthly, by so directing
Pharaoh’s surroundings that his sin would manifest itself in one
way rather than in another. Sin is like the lava of the volcano,
which will certainly come out, but which God directs in its course
down the mountain-side so that it will do least harm. The
gravitation downward is due to man’s evil will; the direction to
this side or to that is due to God’s providence. See _Rom. 9:17,
18_—“_For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show
in thee my power, and that my name might be published abroad in
all the earth. So then he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he
will he hardeneth._” Thus the very passions which excite men to
rebel against God are made completely subservient to his purposes:
see Annotated Paragraph Bible, on _Ps. 76:10_.

God hardens Pharaoh’s heart only after all the earlier plagues
have been sent. Pharaoh had hardened his own heart before. God
hardens no man’s heart who has not first hardened it himself.
Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 140—“Jehovah is never said to harden
the heart of a good man, or of one who is set to do righteousness.
It is always those who are bent on evil whom God hardens. Pharaoh
hardens his own heart before the Lord is said to harden it. Nature
is God, and it is the nature of human beings to harden when they
resist softening influences.” The Watchman, Dec. 5, 1901:11—“God
decreed to Pharaoh what Pharaoh had chosen for himself.
Persistence in certain inclinations and volitions awakens within
the body and soul forces which are not under the control of the
will, and which drive the man on in the way he has chosen. After a
time nature hardens the hearts of men to do evil.”

(_d_) Determinative,—God determines the bounds reached by the evil
passions of his creatures, and the measure of their effects. Since moral
evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God’s determining the
measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve God’s
complicity with the perverse wills which cherish it.

_Job 1:12_—“_And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in
thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand_”; _2:6_—“_Behold, he
is in thy hand; only spare his life_”; _Ps. 124:2_—“_If it had not been
Jehovah who was on our side, when men rose up against us; Then had they
swallowed us up alive_”; _1 Cor. 10:13_—“_will not suffer you to be
tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the
way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it_”; _2 Thess. 2:7_—“_For
the mystery of lawlessness doth already work; only there is one that
restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way_”; _Rev. 20:2, 3_—“_And
he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan,
and bound him for a thousand years._”

Pepper, Outlines of Syst. Theol., 76—The union of God’s will and man’s
will is “such that, while in one view all can be ascribed to God, in
another all can be ascribed to the creature. But how God and the creature
are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A
very dim analogy is furnished in the union of the soul and body in men.
The hand retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will.
This theory recognizes the veracity of consciousness in its witness to
personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God’s control of both the
bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are ruled as free and in
their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two
coëxist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which does not allow this is
false to Scripture and destructive of religion.”

2. Rational proof.

A. Arguments _a priori_ from the divine attributes. (_a_) From the
immutability of God. This makes it certain that he will execute his
eternal plan of the universe and its history. But the execution of this
plan involves not only creation and preservation, but also providence.
(_b_) From the benevolence of God. This renders it certain that he will
care for the intelligent universe he has created. What it was worth his
while to create, it is worth his while to care for. But this care is
providence. (_c_) From the justice of God. As the source of moral law, God
must assure the vindication of law by administering justice in the
universe and punishing the rebellious. But this administration of justice
is providence.

For heathen ideas of providence, see Cicero, De Natura Deorum,
11:30, where Balbus speaks of the existence of the gods as that,
“quo concesso, confitendum est eorum consilio mundum
administrari.” Epictetus, sec. 41—“The principal and most
important duty in religion is to possess your mind with just and
becoming notions of the gods—to believe that there are such
supreme beings, and that they govern and dispose of all the
affairs of the world with a just and good providence.” Marcus
Antoninus: “If there are no gods, or if they have no regard for
human affairs, why should I desire to live in a world without gods
and without a providence? But gods undoubtedly there are, and they
regard human affairs.” See also Bib. Sac., 16:374. As we shall
see, however, many of the heathen writers believed in a general,
rather than in a particular, providence.

On the argument for providence derived from God’s benevolence, see
Appleton, Works, 1:146—“Is indolence more consistent with God’s
majesty than action would be? The happiness of creatures is a
good. Does it honor God to say that he is indifferent to that
which he knows to be good and valuable? Even if the world had come
into existence without his agency, it would become God’s moral
character to pay some attention to creatures so numerous and so
susceptible to pleasure and pain, especially when he might have so
great and favorable an influence on their moral condition.” _John
5:17_—“_My Father worketh even until now, and I work_”—is as
applicable to providence as to preservation.

The complexity of God’s providential arrangements may be
illustrated by Tyndall’s explanation of the fact that heartsease
does not grow in the neighborhood of English villages: 1. In
English villages dogs run loose. 2. Where dogs run loose, cats
must stay at home. 3. Where cats stay at home, field mice abound.
4. Where field mice abound, the nests of bumble-bees are
destroyed. 5. Where bumble-bees’ nests are destroyed, there is no
fertilization of pollen. Therefore, where dogs go loose, no
heartsease grows.

B. Arguments _a posteriori_ from the facts of nature and of history. (_a_)
The outward lot of individuals and nations is not wholly in their own
hands, but is in many acknowledged respects subject to the disposal of a
higher power. (_b_) The observed moral order of the world, although
imperfect, cannot be accounted for without recognition of a divine
providence. Vice is discouraged and virtue rewarded, in ways which are
beyond the power of mere nature. There must be a governing mind and will,
and this mind and will must be the mind and will of God.

The birthplace of individuals and of nations, the natural powers
with which they are endowed, the opportunities and immunities they
enjoy, are beyond their own control. A man’s destiny for time and
for eternity may be practically decided for him by his birth in a
Christian home, rather than in a tenement-house at the Five
Points, or in a kraal of the Hottentots. Progress largely depends
upon “variety of environment” (H. Spencer). But this variety of
environment is in great part independent of our own efforts.

“There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we
will.” Shakespeare here expounds human consciousness. “Man
proposes and God disposes” has become a proverb. Experience
teaches that success and failure are not wholly due to us. Men
often labor and lose; they consult and nothing ensues; they
“embattle and are broken.” Providence is not always on the side of
the heaviest battalions. Not arms but ideas have decided the fate
of the world—as Xerxes found at Thermopylæ, and Napoleon at
Waterloo. Great movements are generally begun without
consciousness of their greatness. _Cf._ _Is. 42:16_—“_I will bring
the blind by a way that they know not_”; _1 Cor. 5:37, 38_—“_thou
sowest ... a bare grain ... but God giveth it a body even as it
pleased him._”

The deed returns to the doer, and character shapes destiny. This
is true in the long run. Eternity will show the truth of the
maxim. But here in time a sufficient number of apparent exceptions
are permitted to render possible a moral probation. If evil were
always immediately followed by penalty, righteousness would have a
compelling power upon the will and the highest virtue would be
impossible. Job’s friends accuse Job of acting upon this
principle. The Hebrew children deny its truth, when they say:
“_But if not_”—even if God does not deliver us—“_we will not serve
thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up_”
(_Dan. 3:18._)

Martineau, Seat of Authority, 298—“Through some misdirection or
infirmity, most of the larger agencies in history have failed to
reach their own ideal, yet have accomplished revolutions greater
and more beneficent; the conquests of Alexander, the empire of
Rome, the Crusades, the ecclesiastical persecutions, the monastic
asceticisms, the missionary zeal of Christendom, have all played a
momentous part in the drama of the world, yet a part which is a
surprise to each. All this shows the controlling presence of a
Reason and a Will transcendent and divine.” Kidd, Social
Evolution, 99, declares that the progress of the race has taken
place only under conditions which have had no sanction from the
reason of the great proportion of the individuals who submit to
them. He concludes that a rational religion is a scientific
impossibility, and that the function of religion is to provide a
super-rational sanction for social progress. We prefer to say that
Providence pushes the race forward even against its will.

James Russell Lowell, Letters, 2:51, suggests that God’s calm
control of the forces of the universe, both physical and mental,
should give us confidence when evil seems impending: “How many
times have I seen the fire-engines of church and state clanging
and lumbering along to put out—a false alarm! And when the heavens
are cloudy, what a glare can be cast by a burning shanty!” See
Sermon on Providence in Political Revolutions, in Farrar’s Science
and Theology, 228. On the moral order of the world,
notwithstanding its imperfections, see Butler, Analogy, Bohn’s
ed., 98; King, in Baptist Review, 1884:202-222.

III. Theories opposing the Doctrine of Providence.

1. Fatalism.

Fatalism maintains the certainty, but denies the freedom, of human
self-determination,—thus substituting fate for providence.

To this view we object that (_a_) it contradicts consciousness, which
testifies that we are free; (_b_) it exalts the divine power at the
expense of God’s truth, wisdom, holiness, love; (_c_) it destroys all
evidence of the personality and freedom of God; (_d_) it practically makes
necessity the only God, and leaves the imperatives of our moral nature
without present validity or future vindication.

The Mohammedans have frequently been called fatalists, and the
practical effect of the teachings of the Koran upon the masses is
to make them so. The ordinary Mohammedan will have no physician or
medicine, because everything happens as God has before appointed.
Smith, however, in his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, denies that
fatalism is essential to the system. _Islam_ = “submission,” and
the participle _Moslem_ = “submitted,” _i. e._, to God. Turkish
proverb: “A man cannot escape what is written on his forehead.”
The Mohammedan thinks of God’s dominant attribute as being
greatness rather than righteousness, power rather than purity. God
is the personification of arbitrary will, not the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. But there is in the system an absence of
sacerdotalism, a jealousy for the honor of God, a brotherhood of
believers, a reverence for what is considered the word of God, and
a bold and habitual devotion of its adherents to their faith.

Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:489, refers to the Mussulman
tradition existing in Egypt that the fate of Islam requires that
it should at last be superseded by Christianity. F. W. Sanders
denies that the Koran is peculiarly _sensual_. “The Christian and
Jewish religions,” he says, “have their paradise also. The Koran
makes this the reward, but not the ideal, of conduct; ‘Grace from
thy Lord—that is the grand bliss.’ The emphasis of the Koran is
upon right living. The Koran does not teach the propagation of
religion by _force_. It declares that there shall be no compulsion
in religion. The practice of converting by the sword is to be
distinguished from the teaching of Mohammed, just as the
Inquisition and the slave-trade in Christendom do not prove that
Jesus taught them. The Koran did not institute _polygamy_. It
found unlimited polygamy, divorce, and infanticide. The last it
prohibited; the two former it restricted and ameliorated, just as
Moses found polygamy, but brought it within bounds. The Koran is
not hostile to _secular learning_. Learning flourished under the
Bagdad and Spanish Caliphates. When Moslems oppose learning, they
do so without authority from the Koran. The Roman Catholic church
has opposed schools, but we do not attribute this to the gospel.”
See Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God.

Calvinists can assert freedom, since man’s will finds its highest
freedom only in submission to God. Islam also cultivates
submission, but it is the submission not of love but of fear. The
essential difference between Mohammedanism and Christianity is
found in the revelation which the latter gives of the love of God
in Christ—a revelation which secures from free moral agents the
submission of love; see page 186. On fatalism, see McCosh,
Intuitions, 266; Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 52-74, 98-108; Mill,
Autobiography, 168-170, and System of Logic, 521-526; Hamilton,
Metaphysics, 692; Stewart, Active and Moral Powers of Man, ed.
Walker, 268-324.

2. Casualism.

Casualism transfers the freedom of mind to nature, as fatalism transfers
the fixity of nature to mind. It thus exchanges providence for chance.
Upon this view we remark:

(_a_) If chance be only another name for human ignorance, a name for the
fact that there are trivial occurrences in life which have no meaning or
relation to us,—we may acknowledge this, and still hold that providence
arranges every so-called chance, for purposes beyond our knowledge.
Chance, in this sense, is providential coincidence which we cannot
understand, and do not need to trouble ourselves about.

Not all chances are of equal importance. The casual meeting of a
stranger in the street need not bring God’s providence before me,
although I know that God arranges it. Yet I can conceive of that
meeting as leading to religious conversation and to the stranger’s
conversion. When we are prepared for them, we shall see many
opportunities which are now as unmeaning to us as the gold in the
river-beds was to the early Indians in California. I should be an
ingrate, if I escaped a lightning-stroke, and did not thank God;
yet Dr. Arnold’s saying that every school boy should put on his
hat for God’s glory, and with a high moral purpose, seems morbid.
There is a certain room for the play of arbitrariness. We must not
afflict ourselves or the church of God by requiring a Pharisaic
punctiliousness in minutiæ. Life is too short to debate the
question which shoe we shall put on first. “Love God and do what
you will,” said Augustine; that is, Love God, and act out that
love in a simple and natural way. Be free in your service, yet be
always on the watch for indications of God’s will.

(_b_) If chance be taken in the sense of utter absence of all causal
connections in the phenomena of matter and mind,—we oppose to this notion
the fact that the causal judgment is formed in accordance with a
fundamental and necessary law of human thought, and that no science or
knowledge is possible without the assumption of its validity.

In _Luke 10:31_, our Savior says: “_By chance a certain priest was
going down that way_.” Janet: “Chance is not a cause, but a
coincidence of causes.” Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge,
197—“By chance is not meant lack of causation, but the coincidence
in an event of mutually independent series of causation. Thus the
unpurposed meeting of two persons is spoken of as a chance one,
when the movement of neither implies that of the other. Here the
antithesis of chance is purpose.”

(_c_) If chance be used in the sense of undesigning cause,—it is evidently
insufficient to explain the regular and uniform sequences of nature, or
the moral progress of the human race. These things argue a superintending
and designing mind—in other words, a providence. Since reason demands not
only a cause, but a sufficient cause, for the order of the physical and
moral world, casualism must be ruled out.

The observer at the signal station was asked what was the climate
of Rochester. “Climate?” he replied; “Rochester has no
climate,—only weather!” So Chauncey Wright spoke of the ups and
downs of human affairs as simply “cosmical weather.” But our
intuition of design compels us to see mind and purpose in
individual and national history, as well as in the physical
universe. The same argument which proves the existence of God
proves also the existence of a providence. See Farrar, Life of
Christ, 1:155, note.

3. Theory of a merely general providence.

Many who acknowledge God’s control over the movements of planets and the
destinies of nations deny any divine arrangement of particular events.
Most of the arguments against deism are equally valid against the theory
of a merely general providence. This view is indeed only a form of deism,
which holds that God has not wholly withdrawn himself from the universe,
but that his activity within it is limited to the maintenance of general
laws.

This appears to have been the view of most of the heathen
philosophers. Cicero: “Magna dii curant; parva negligunt.” “Even
in kingdoms among men,” he says, “kings do not trouble themselves
with insignificant affairs.” Fullerton, Conceptions of the
Infinite, 9—“Plutarch thought there could not be an infinity of
worlds,—Providence could not possibly take charge of so many.
‘Troublesome and boundless infinity’ could be grasped by no
consciousness.” The ancient Cretans made an image of Jove without
ears, for they said: “It is a shame to believe that God would hear
the talk of men.” So Jerome, the church Father, thought it absurd
that God should know just how many gnats and cockroaches there
were in the world. David Harum is wiser when he expresses the
belief that there is nothing wholly bad or useless in the world:
“A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog,—they keep him
from broodin’ on bein’ a dog.” This has been paraphrased: “A
reasonable number of beaux are good for a girl,—they keep her from
brooding over her being a girl.”

In addition to the arguments above alluded to, we may urge against this
theory that:

(_a_) General control over the course of nature and of history is
impossible without control over the smallest particulars which affect the
course of nature and of history. Incidents so slight as well-nigh to
escape observation at the time of their occurrence are frequently found to
determine the whole future of a human life, and through that life the
fortunes of a whole empire and of a whole age.

“Nothing great has great beginnings.” “Take care of the pence, and
the pounds will take care of themselves.” “Care for the chain is
care for the links of the chain.” Instances in point are the
sleeplessness of King Ahasuerus (_Esther 6:1_), and the seeming
chance that led to the reading of the record of Mordecai’s service
and to the salvation of the Jews in Persia; the spider’s web spun
across the entrance to the cave in which Mohammed had taken
refuge, which so deceived his pursuers that they passed on In a
bootless chase, leaving to the world the religion and the empire
of the Moslems; the preaching of Peter the Hermit, which
occasioned the first Crusade; the chance shot of an archer, which
pierced the right eye of Harold, the last of the purely English
kings, gained the battle of Hastings for William the Conqueror,
and secured the throne of England for the Normans; the flight of
pigeons to the south-west, which changed the course of Columbus,
hitherto directed towards Virginia, to the West Indies, and so
prevented the dominion of Spain over North America; the storm that
dispersed the Spanish Armada and saved England from the Papacy,
and the storm that dispersed the French fleet gathered for the
conquest of New England—the latter on a day of fasting and prayer
appointed by the Puritans to avert the calamity; the settling of
New England by the Puritans, rather than by French Jesuits; the
order of Council restraining Cromwell and his friends from sailing
to America; Major André’s lack of self-possession in presence of
his captors, which led him to ask an improper question instead of
showing his passport, and which saved the American cause; the
unusually early commencement of cold weather, which frustrated the
plans of Napoleon and destroyed his army in Russia; the fatal shot
at Fort Sumter, which precipitated the war of secession and
resulted in the abolition of American slavery. Nature is linked to
history; the breeze warps the course of the bullet; the worm
perforates the plank of the ship. God must care for the least, or
he cannot care for the greatest.

“Large doors swing on small hinges.” The barking of a dog
determined F. W. Robertson to be a preacher rather than a soldier.
Robert Browning, Mr. Sludge the Medium: “We find great things are
made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last
Comes God behind them.” E. G. Robinson: “We cannot suppose only a
general outline to have been in the mind of God, while the
filling-up is left to be done in some other way. The general
includes the special.” Dr. Lloyd, one of the Oxford Professors,
said to Pusey, “I wish you would learn something about those
German critics.” “In the obedient spirit of those times,” writes
Pusey, “I set myself at once to learn German, and I went to
Göttingen, to study at once the language and the theology. My life
turned on that hint of Dr. Lloyd’s.”

Goldwin Smith: “Had a bullet entered the brain of Cromwell or of
William III in his first battle, or had Gustavus not fallen at
Lützen, the course of history apparently would have been changed.
The course even of science would have been changed, if there had
not been a Newton and a Darwin.” The annexation of Corsica to
France gave to France a Napoleon, and to Europe a conqueror.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 101—“Had the monastery at Erfurt
deputed another than young Luther on its errand to paganized Rome,
or had Leo X sent a less scandalous agent than Tetzel on his
business to Germany, the seeds of the Reformation might have
fallen by the wayside where they had no deepness of earth, and the
Western revolt of the human mind might have taken another date and
another form.” See Appleton, Works, 1:149 _sq._; Lecky, England in
the Eighteenth Century, chap. I.

(_b_) The love of God which prompts a general care for the universe must
also prompt a particular care for the smallest events which affect the
happiness of his creatures. It belongs to love to regard nothing as
trifling or beneath its notice which has to do with the interests of the
object of its affection. Infinite love may therefore be expected to
provide for all, even the minutest things in the creation. Without belief
in this particular care, men cannot long believe in God’s general care.
Faith in a particular providence is indispensable to the very existence of
practical religion; for men will not worship or recognize a God who has no
direct relation to them.

Man’s care for his own body involves care for the least important
members of it. A lover’s devotion is known by his interest in the
minutest concerns of his beloved. So all our affairs are matters
of interest to God. Pope’s Essay on Man: “All nature is but art
unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal
good.” If harvests may be labored for and lost without any agency
of God; if rain or sun may act like fate, sweeping away the
results of years, and God have no hand in it all; if wind and
storm may wreck the ship and drown our dearest friends, and God
not care for us or for our loss, then all possibility of general
trust in God will disappear also.

God’s care is shown in the least things as well as in the
greatest. In Gethsemane Christ says: “_Let these go their way:
that the word might be fulfilled which he spake, Of those whom
thou hast given me I lost not one_” (_John 18:8, 9_). It is the
same spirit as that of his intercessory prayer: “_I guarded them,
and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition_” (_John
17:12_). Christ gives himself as a prisoner that his disciples may
go free, even as he redeems us from the curse of the law by being
made a curse for us (_Gal. 3:13_). The dewdrop is moulded by the
same law that rounds the planets into spheres. Gen. Grant said he
had never but once sought a place for himself, and in that place
he was a comparative failure; he had been an instrument in God’s
hand for the accomplishing of God’s purposes, apart from any plan
or thought or hope of his own.

Of his journey through the dark continent in search of David
Livingston, Henry M. Stanley wrote in Scribner’s Monthly for June,
1890: “Constrained at the darkest hour humbly to confess that
without God’s help I was helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest
solitudes that I would confess his aid before men. Silence as of
death was around me; it was midnight; I was weakened by illness,
prostrated with fatigue, and wan with anxiety for my white and
black companions, whose fate was a mystery. In this physical and
mental distress I besought God to give me back my people. Nine
hours later we were exulting with a rapturous joy. In full view of
all was the crimson flag with the crescent, and beneath its waving
folds was the long-lost rear column.... My own designs were
frustrated constantly by unhappy circumstances. I endeavored to
steer my course as direct as possible, but there was an
unaccountable influence at the helm.... I have been conscious that
the issues of every effort were in other hands.... Divinity seems
to have hedged us while we journeyed, impelling us whither it
would, effecting its own will, but constantly guiding and
protecting us.” He refuses to believe that it is all the result of
“luck”, and he closes with a doxology which we should expect from
Livingston but not from him: “Thanks be to God, forever and ever!”

(_c_) In times of personal danger, and in remarkable conjunctures of
public affairs, men instinctively attribute to God a control of the events
which take place around them. The prayers which such startling emergencies
force from men’s lips are proof that God is present and active in human
affairs. This testimony of our mental constitution must be regarded as
virtually the testimony of him who framed this constitution.

No advance of science can rid us of this conviction, since it
comes from a deeper source than mere reasoning. The intuition of
design is awakened by the connection of events in our daily life,
as much as by the useful adaptations which we see in nature. _Ps.
107:23-28_—“_They that go down to the sea in ships ... mount up to
the heavens, they go down again to the depths ... And are at their
wits’ end. Then they cry unto Jehovah in their trouble._” A narrow
escape from death shows us a present God and Deliverer. Instance
the general feeling throughout the land, expressed by the press as
well as by the pulpit, at the breaking out of our rebellion and at
the President’s subsequent Proclamation of Emancipation.

“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.” For contrast
between Nansen’s ignoring of God in his polar journey and Dr.
Jacob Chamberlain’s calling upon God in his strait in India, see
Missionary Review, May, 1898. Sunday School Times, March 4,
1893—“Benjamin Franklin became a deist at the age of fifteen.
Before the Revolutionary War he was merely a shrewd and pushing
business man. He had public spirit, and he made one happy
discovery in science. But ‘Poor Richard’s’ sayings express his
mind at that time. The perils and anxieties of the great war gave
him a deeper insight. He and others entered upon it ‘with a rope
around their necks.’ As he told the Constitutional Convention of
1787, when he proposed that its daily sessions be opened with
prayer, the experiences of that war showed him that ‘God verily
rules in the affairs of men.’ And when the designs for an American
coinage were under discussion, Franklin proposed to stamp on them,
not ‘A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned,’ or any other piece of
worldly prudence, but ‘The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of
Wisdom.’ ”

(_d_) Christian experience confirms the declarations of Scripture that
particular events are brought about by God with special reference to the
good or ill of the individual. Such events occur at times in such direct
connection with the Christian’s prayers that no doubt remains with regard
to the providential arrangement of them. The possibility of such divine
agency in natural events cannot be questioned by one who, like the
Christian, has had experience of the greater wonders of regeneration and
daily intercourse with God, and who believes in the reality of creation,
incarnation, and miracles.

Providence prepares the way for men’s conversion, sometimes by
their own partial reformation, sometimes by the sudden death of
others near them. Instance Luther and Judson. The Christian learns
that the same Providence that led him before his conversion is
busy after his conversion in directing his steps and in supplying
his wants. Daniel Defoe: “I have been fed more by miracle than
Elijah when the angels were his purveyors.” In _Psalm 32_, David
celebrates not only God’s pardoning mercy but his subsequent
providential leading: “_I will counsel thee with mine eye upon
thee_” (_verse 8_). It may be objected that we often mistake the
meaning of events. We answer that, as in nature, so in providence,
we are compelled to believe, not that we _know_ the design, but
that there _is_ a design. Instance Shelley’s drowning, and Jacob
Knapp’s prayer that his opponent might be stricken dumb. Lyman
Beecher’s attributing the burning of the Unitarian church to God’s
judgment upon false doctrine was invalidated a little later by the
burning of his own church.

_Job 23:10_—“_He knoweth the way that is mine,_” or “_the way that
is with me,_” _i. e._, my inmost way, life, character; “_When he
hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold._” _1 Cor. 19:4_—“_and
the rock was Christ_”—Christ was the ever present source of their
refreshment and life, both physical and spiritual. God’s
providence is all exercised through Christ. _2 Cor. 2:14_—“_But
thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ_”;
not, as in A. V., “_causeth us to triumph_.” Paul glories, not in
conquering, but in being conquered. Let Christ triumph, not Paul.
“Great King of grace, my heart subdue; I would be led in triumph
too. A willing captive to my Lord, To own the conquests of his
word.” Therefore Paul can call himself “_the prisoner of Christ
Jesus_” (_Eph. 3:1_). It was Christ who had shut him up two years
in Cæsarea, and then two succeeding years in Rome.

IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.

1. To miracles and works of grace.

Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor
affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance
of God’s particular providence which has special relation to us or makes
peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means
which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In
special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God’s
universal control.

Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as
belonging to a different order of things from God’s special providences.
They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and
antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship.
Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God’s method
of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special
providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of
extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the
destruction of Sennacherib’s army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the
plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be
counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they
are operations of the wonder-working God.

The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or
particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a
special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the
insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the
geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light
either of a general or of a special providence. In all the
operations of nature and all the events of life God’s providence
is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly
suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God.
Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore’s life was saved
during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly
obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came
from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car
to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting
was crushed in and utterly demolished.” In a similar way, the life
of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.

Trench gives the name of “providential miracles” to those
Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the
agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also
(Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the
predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the
difference in effect between miracles and special providences is
that the latter give _some_ warrant, while the former give _full_
warrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls
special providences “invisible miracles.” Bp. of Southampton,
Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the
tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua,
Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the
direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have
ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is
necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial
law it is said: _‘__Jehovah spake unto Moses__’__ (Num. 5:1)_. God
is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are
strikingly rare.” We prefer to say that the line between the
natural and the supernatural, between special providence and
miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be
regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as
we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other
events or from the point of view of its relation to God.

E. G. Robinson: “If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a
strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and
brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.” There is abundant evident of
volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical
Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in
Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of
the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described
as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river
by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt
slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot’s wife and turned her into
“_a mound of salt_” (_Gen. 19:26_). In like manner, some of Jesus’
works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics
and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while
yet they show that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the
naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special
Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418. _Per contra_, see
Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and
Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences,
109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The
Immanence of God, 56-65.

2. To prayer and its answer.

What has been said with regard to God’s connection with nature suggests
the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of
natural law.

Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of
denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he
can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly “that without a
disturbance of natural law quite as serious as the stoppage of an
eclipse, or the rolling of the St. Lawrence up the falls of
Niagara, no act of humiliation, individual or national, could call
one shower from heaven or deflect toward us a single beam of the
sun.” In reply we would remark:

A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:

(_a_) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon
the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will
not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as
subjective results.

According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere
spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground
by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after
hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman: “We can make use of no
expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does
not imply that these prayers have an influence.” See Tyndall on
Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray
to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the
bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice?
Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a “mere dumb-bell
exercise.” Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China
by tugging away at his own pigtail.

Hyde, God’s Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex
action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two
wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the
Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and
power.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows
Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions
which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that “Jesus
taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer in response to a request
for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for
requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good
things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the
kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of
petition.” Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also: “_All
things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them_” (_Mark 11:24_).

(_b_) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means,
such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of
spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and
experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take
place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had
not gone before.

According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah,
not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a
compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is
moved to help the prophet. _1 K. 17:9_—“_behold, I have commanded
a widow there to sustain thee._” But God could also feed Elijah by
the ravens and the angel (_1 K. 17:4; 19:15_), and the pouring
rain that followed Elijah’s prayer (_1 K. 18:42-45_) cannot be
explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic
Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the
windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning
papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the slopes of the
Rocky Mountains.” But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as
in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews,
106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404;
George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of
Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to
send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure
employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard
to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the
coming of the aid.

(_c_) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of
nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take
account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing
the order of God’s being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but
wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.

This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no
force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and
powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human
will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire
that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence
without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of
the one petition: “_Thy will be done_” (_Mat. 6:10_). E. G.
Robinson: “It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers
are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in
his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the
chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual
minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in
Romanism the church will do it all for you.”

(_d_) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case
to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is
not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion
as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it
influences God.

We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do
for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging
them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God
educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal
dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the
“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under
the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher
and better training which is under personality” (Hopkins, Sermon
on Prayer-gauge, 16).

It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:

B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the
sequences of nature,—

(_a_) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our
observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to
themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of
chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the
rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers
to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but
a use of law unknown to us.

Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge: “Nature is uniform in her
processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run
uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam
the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of
the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding;
why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our
masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better
because they are uniform. And our servants are not God’s masters.”
Kendall Brooks: “The master of a musical instrument can vary
without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which
these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not
changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite
variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be unchanging
in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises
the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying
laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of
results.”

Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far
more flexible in God’s hands than it is in ours. We act on second
causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them
at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the
system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to
his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who
articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion
of his soaring soul.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the
chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery
cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the
attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric
force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into
chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable
rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”

Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of
centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola,
and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in
temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So
unexpected results are brought about and surprises as
revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”
William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:
“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the
physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic
conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as
a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below
which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can
occur.” Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice
between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great
sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”

Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and
present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is
believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that
prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his
part of an imperative volition.

The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is
elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman,
Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single,
but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation,
they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed,
not by invariable forces, but by _endlessly varying combinations
of invariable forces_.” Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign
of Law, 100.

Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only
intervene to produce and combine together the different agents
whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need
of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting
combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without
a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should
study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first
hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any
especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and
combination.”

Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his
field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling
great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can
surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says
that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is
conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and
consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion,
he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of
phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying
these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in
reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should
seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we
remark, in addition, that:

(_b_) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and
the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of
his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in
perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal
and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use
of the appropriate and appointed means.

J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of
itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the
perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through
a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the
observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned
pattern appears.” E. G. Robinson: “The most formidable objection
to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the
doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free
actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to
be false.” The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction
prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied: “First
consult the barometer.” Phillips Brooks: “Prayer is not the
conquering of God’s reluctance, but the taking hold of God’s
willingness.”

The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain.
They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine
hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next
morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen
days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A
large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had
assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no
shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had
already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:
“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till
the gospel is preached to this multitude!” Then he knelt and
prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after
they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers.
Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either
side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry
where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed
showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before
omitted.

Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through
the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God’s
personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed
by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having
God’s immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for
in the original plan of the universe.

The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and
moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of
intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop
Berkeley: “The universe is God’s ceaseless conversation with his
creatures.” The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the
discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual
ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God
does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of
the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the
beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all
their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his
personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each
other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects
which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not
confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and
omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have
no fear, either that natural law will bar God’s answers to prayer,
or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of
the universe.

Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry
never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never
rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of
God’s hands, the earth is God’s footstool, the winds are God’s
ministers, the stars are God’s host, the thunder is God’s voice.
What we call Nature the Jew called God.” Miss Heloise E. Hersey:
“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by
which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host,
they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of
heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of
the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of
truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial
vision.” Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us
one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What
heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh
as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We
rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny
outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of
power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or
others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne
with care; That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or
troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage
are with thee?” See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309;
McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion,
178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan
Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable
Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer;
Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and
Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor,
1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull,
Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.

C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential
answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just
as a father’s love may be tested by a dutiful son.

(_a_) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the
Christian and in the past history of the church.

_Ps. 116:1-8_—“_I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my
supplications._” Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers.
George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a
multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:
“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If
there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof,
this is.” Mr. Spurgeon’s language is rhetorical: he means simply that
God’s answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson: “I
never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and
earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant
a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it
came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and
while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief
from my heart!”

(_b_) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a
formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and
the priests of Baal.

_Is. 7:10-13_—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it
indicated unbelief. _1 K. 18:36-38_—Elijah said, “_let it be known
this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah
fell, and consumed the burnt offering._” Romaine speaks of “a year
famous for believing.” _Mat 21:21, 22_—“_even if ye shall say unto
this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be
done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive._” “Impossible?” said Napoleon; “then
it shall be done!” Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson’s Life,
1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the
operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why
should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any
distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when
he deals with the common elements of nature?” “Watch in prayer to
see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness,
will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath
business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”

Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature
simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the
action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor
over and above the life of nature and the life of man.” Hartley
Coleridge: “Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou
canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with
long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the
time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth
shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the
blessed time to expedite. Whate’er is good to wish, ask that of
heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be
perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth
to be; But if for any wish thou dar’st not pray, Then pray to God
to cast that wish away.”

(_c_) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been
already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test
imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who
sought a sign from heaven.

_Mat. 12:39_—“_An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a
sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah
the prophet._” Tyndall’s prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of
prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the
answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for
which we pray, may be only signs of God’s faithfulness and love.
George Müller: “I myself have been bringing certain requests
before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day
has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet
the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it;
I confidently expect it.” Christ’s prayer, “_let this cup pass
away from me_” (_Mat. 26:39_), and Paul’s prayer that the “_thorn
in the flesh_” might depart from him (_2 Cor. 12:7, 8_), were not
answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers
always answered in the way we expect. Christ’s prayer was not
answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking
of the cup was really his glory; and Paul’s prayer was not
answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn
was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and
Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own
freedom from suffering.

(_d_) Since God’s will is the link between prayer and its answer, there
can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any
proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which
free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and
moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith’s denial
that any scientific method can be applied to history because it
would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and
so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more
impossible than the development of the individual according to a
fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected.
Froude says history is not a science, because no science could
foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that
“prediction is the crown of all science.” But, as Diman remarks:
“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not
predict.” Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that
it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and
forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests
which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such
a test God urges his people to use, in _Mal. 3:10_—“_Bring ye the
whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if
I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a
blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it._” All
such prayer is a reflection of Christ’s words—some fragment of his
teaching transformed into a supplication (_John 15:7_; see
Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_); all such prayer is moreover the
work of the Spirit of God (_Rom. 8:26, 27_). It is therefore sure
of an answer.

But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to
the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the
Prayer-gauge, 22 _sq._—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or
the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God’s wisdom
might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the
objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians
therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest
their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask
for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a
well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything....
There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special
direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason
that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down.
Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for
anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the
object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these
laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near
the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”

Herbert Spencer’s Sociology is only social physics. He denies
freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the
announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of
understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will.
But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may
be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the
interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the
same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give
everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child
give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome
sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the
engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press
the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline
to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him,
unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit
“_helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought;
but the Spirit himself __ maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered_” (_Rom. 8:26_). And we ought
not to talk of “submitting” to perfect Wisdom, or of “being
resigned” to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra,
2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We,
ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise
powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our
prayers.” See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297. _Per
contra_, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.

3. To Christian activity.

Here the truth lies between the two extremes of quietism and naturalism.

(_a_) In opposition to the false abnegation of human reason and will which
quietism demands, we hold that God guides us, not by continual miracle,
but by his natural providence and the energizing of our faculties by his
Spirit, so that we rationally and freely do our own work, and work out our
own salvation.

Upham, Interior Life, 356, defines quietism as “cessation of
wandering thoughts and discursive imaginations, rest from
irregular desires and affections, and perfect submission of the
will.” Its advocates, however, have often spoken of it as a giving
up of our will and reason, and a swallowing up of these in the
wisdom and will of God. This phraseology is misleading, and savors
of a pantheistic merging of man in God. Dorner: “Quietism makes
God a monarch without living subjects.” Certain English quietists,
like the Mohammedans, will not employ physicians in sickness. They
quote _2 Chron. 16:12, 13_—Asa “_sought not to Jehovah, but to the
physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers_.” They forget that the
“_physicians_” alluded to in Chronicles were probably heathen
necromancers. Cromwell to his Ironsides: “Trust God, and keep your
powder dry!”

Providence does not exclude, but rather implies the operation of
natural law, by which we mean God’s regular way of working. It
leaves no excuse for the sarcasm of Robert Browning’s Mr. Sludge
the Medium, 223—“Saved your precious self from what befell The
thirty-three whom Providence forgot.” Schurman, Belief in God,
213—“The temples were hung with the votive offerings of those only
who had _escaped_ drowning.” “So like Provvy!” Bentham used to
say, when anything particularly unseemly occurred in the way of
natural catastrophe, God reveals himself in natural law.
Physicians and medicine are his methods, as well as the
impartation of faith and courage to the patient. The advocates of
faith-cure should provide by faith that no believing Christian
should die. With the apostolic miracles should go inspiration, as
Edward Irving declared. “Every man is as lazy as circumstances
will admit.” We throw upon the shoulders of Providence the burdens
which belong to us to bear. “_Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will
and to work, for his good pleasure_” (_Phil. 2:12, 13_).

Prayer without the use of means is an insult to God. “If God has
decreed that you should live, what is the use of your eating or
drinking?” Can a drowning man refuse to swim, or even to lay hold
of the rope that is thrown to him, and yet ask God to save him on
account of his faith? “Tie your camel,” said Mohammed, “and commit
it to God.” Frederick Douglas used to say that when in slavery he
often prayed for freedom, but his prayer was never answered till
he prayed with his feet—and ran away. Whitney, Integrity of
Christian Science, 68—“The existence of the dynamo at the
power-house does not make unnecessary the trolley line, nor the
secondary motor, nor the conductor’s application of the power.
True quietism is a resting in the Lord after we have done our
part.” _Ps. 37:7_—“_Rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for him_”;
_Is. 57:2_—“_He entereth into peace; they rest in their beds, each
one that walketh in his uprightness_”. Ian Maclaren, Cure of
Souls, 147—“Religion has three places of abode: in the reason,
which is theology; in the conscience, which is ethics; and in the
heart, which is quietism.” On the self-guidance of Christ, see
Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 202-232.

George Müller, writing about ascertaining the will of God, says:
“I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it
has no will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine tenths of
the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the
Lord’s will, whatever it may be. Having done this, I do not leave
the result to feeling or simple impression. If I do so, I make
myself liable to a great delusion. I seek the will of the Spirit
of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit
and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone,
without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If
the Holy Ghost guides us at all, he will do it according to the
Scriptures, and never contrary to them. Next I take into account
providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God’s
will in connection with his Word and his Spirit. I ask God in
prayer to reveal to me his will aright. Thus through prayer to
God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate
judgment according to the best of my knowledge and ability, and,
if my mind is thus at peace, I proceed accordingly.”

We must not confound rational piety with false enthusiasm. See
Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm. “Not quiescence, but
acquiescence, is demanded of us.” As God feeds “_the birds of the
heaven_” (_Mat. 6:26_), not by dropping food from heaven into
their mouths, but by stimulating them to seek food for themselves,
so God provides for his rational creatures by giving them a
sanctified common sense and by leading them to use it. In a true
sense Christianity gives us more will than ever. The Holy Spirit
emancipates the will, sets it upon proper objects, and fills it
with new energy. We are therefore not to surrender ourselves
passively to whatever professes to be a divine suggestion: _1 John
4:1_—“_believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether
they are of God._” The test is the revealed word of God: _Is.
8:20_—“_To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not
according to this word, surely there is no morning for them._” See
remarks on false Mysticism, pages 32, 33.

(_b_) In opposition to naturalism, we hold that God is continually near
the human spirit by his providential working, and that this providential
working is so adjusted to the Christian’s nature and necessities as to
furnish instruction with regard to duty, discipline of religious
character, and needed help and comfort in trial.

In interpreting God’s providences, as in interpreting Scripture, we are
dependent upon the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is, indeed, in
great part an application of Scripture truth to present circumstances.
While we never allow ourselves to act blindly and irrationally, but
accustom ourselves to weigh evidence with regard to duty, we are to
expect, as the gift of the Spirit, an understanding of circumstances—a
fine sense of God’s providential purposes with regard to us, which will
make our true course plain to ourselves, although we may not always be
able to explain it to others.

The Christian may have a continual divine guidance. Unlike the
unfaithful and unbelieving, of whom it is said, in _Ps. 106:13_,
“_They waited not for his counsel,_” the true believer has wisdom
given him from above. _Ps. 32:8_—“_I will instruct thee and teach
thee in the way which thou shalt go_”; _Prov. 3:6_—“_In all thy
ways acknowledge him, And he will direct thy paths_”; _Phil.
1:9_—“_And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and
more in knowledge and all discernment_” (αἰσθήσει = spiritual
discernment); _James 1:5_—“_if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him
ask of God, who giveth_ (τοῦ διδόντος Θεοῦ) _to all liberally and
upbraideth not_”; _John 15:15_—“_No longer do I call you servants;
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called
you friends_”; _Col. 1:9, 10_—“_that ye may be filled with the
knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing._”

God’s Spirit makes Providence as well as the Bible personal to us.
From every page of nature, as well as of the Bible, the living God
speaks to us. Tholuck: “The more we recognize in every daily
occurrence God’s secret inspiration, guiding and controlling us,
the more will all which to others wears a common and every-day
aspect prove to us a sign and a wondrous work.” Hutton, Essays:
“Animals that are blind slaves of impulse, driven about by forces
from within, have so to say fewer valves in their moral
constitution for the entrance of divine guidance. But minds alive
to every word of God give constant opportunity for his
interference with suggestions that may alter the course of their
lives. The higher the mind, the more it glides into the region of
providential control. God turns the good by the slightest breath
of thought.” So the Christian hymn, “Guide me, O thou great
Jehovah!” likens God’s leading of the believer to that of Israel
by the pillar of fire and cloud; and Paul in his dungeon calls
himself “_the prisoner of Christ Jesus_” (_Eph. 3:1_). Affliction
is the discipline of God’s providence. Greek proverb: “He who does
not get thrashed, does not get educated.” On God’s Leadings, see
A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 560-562.

Abraham “_went out, not knowing whither he went_” (_Heb. 11:8_).
Not till he reached Canaan did he know the place of his
destination. Like a child he placed his hand in the hand of his
unseen Father, to be led whither he himself knew not. We often
have guidance without discernment of that guidance. _Is.
42:16_—“_I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; in
paths that they know not will I lead them._” So we act more wisely
than we ourselves understand, and afterwards look back with
astonishment to see what we have been able to accomplish. Emerson:
“Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he
knew.” Disappointments? Ah, you make a mistake in the spelling;
the D should be an H: His appointments. Melanchthon: “Quem poetæ
fortunam, nos Deum appellamus.” Chinese proverb: “The good God
never smites with both hands.” “Tact is a sort of psychical
automatism” (Ladd). There is a Christian tact which is rarely at
fault, because its possessor is “_led by the Spirit of God_”
(_Rom. 8:14_). Yet we must always make allowance, as Oliver
Cromwell used to say, “for the possibility of being mistaken.”

When Luther’s friends wrote despairingly of the negotiations at
the Diet of Worms, he replied from Coburg that he had been looking
up at the night sky, spangled and studded with stars, and had
found no pillars to hold them up. And yet they did not fall. God
needs no props for his stars and planets. He hangs them on
nothing. So, in the working of God’s providence, the unseen is
prop enough for the seen. Henry Drummond, Life, 127—“To find out
God’s will: 1. Pray. 2. Think. 3. Talk to wise people, but do not
regard their decision as final. 4. Beware of the bias of your own
will, but do not be too much afraid of it (God never unnecessarily
thwarts a man’s nature and likings, and it is a mistake to think
that his will is always in the line of the disagreeable). 5.
Meantime, do the next thing (for doing God’s will in small things
is the best preparation for knowing it in great things). 6. When
decision and action are necessary, go ahead. 7. Never reconsider
the decision when it is finally acted on; and 8. You will probably
not find out until afterwards, perhaps long afterwards, that you
have been led at all.”

Amiel lamented that everything was left to his own responsibility
and declared: “It is this thought that disgusts me with the
government of my own life. To win true peace, a man needs to feel
himself directed, pardoned and sustained by a supreme Power, to
feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have
him be,—in harmony with God and the universe. This faith gives
strength and calm. I have not got it. All that is seems to me
arbitrary and fortuitous.” How much better is Wordsworth’s faith,
Excursion, book 4:581—“One adequate support For the calamities of
mortal life Exists, one only: an assured belief That the
procession of our fate, howe’er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a
Being Of infinite benevolence and power, Whose everlasting
purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good.” Mrs.
Browning, De Profundis, stanza xxiii—“I praise thee while my days
go on; I love thee while my days go on! Through dark and dearth,
through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I
thank thee while my days go on!”

4. To the evil acts of free agents.

(_a_) Here we must distinguish between the natural agency and the moral
agency of God, or between acts of permissive providence and acts of
efficient causation. We are ever to remember that God neither works evil,
nor causes his creatures to work evil. All sin is chargeable to the
self-will and perversity of the creature; to declare God the author of it
is the greatest of blasphemies.

Bp. Wordsworth: “God _foresees_ evil deeds, but never _forces_
them.” “God does not cause sin, any more than the rider of a
limping horse causes the limping.” Nor can it be said that Satan
is the author of man’s sin. Man’s powers are his own. Not Satan,
but the man himself, gives the wrong application to these powers.
Not the cause, but the occasion, of sin is in the tempter; the
cause is in the evil will which yields to his persuasions.

(_b_) But while man makes up his evil decision independently of God, God
does, by his natural agency, order the method in which this inward evil
shall express itself, by limiting it in time, place, and measure, or by
guiding it to the end which his wisdom and love, and not man’s intent, has
set. In all this, however, God only allows sin to develop itself after its
own nature, so that it may be known, abhorred, and if possible overcome
and forsaken.

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:272-284—“Judas’s treachery works the
reconciliation of the world, and Israel’s apostasy the salvation
of the Gentiles.... God smooths the path of the sinner, and gives
him chance for the outbreak of the evil, like a wise physician who
draws to the surface of the body the disease that has been raging
within, in order that it may be cured, if possible, by mild means,
or, if not, may be removed by the knife.”

Christianity rises in spite of, nay, in consequence of opposition,
like a kite against the wind. When Christ has used the sword with
which he has girded himself, as he used Cyrus and the Assyrian, he
breaks it and throws it away. He turns the world upside down that
he may get it right side up. He makes use of every member of
society, as the locomotive uses every cog. The sufferings of the
martyrs add to the number of the church; the worship of relics
stimulates the Crusades; the worship of the saints leads to
miracle plays and to the modern drama; the worship of images helps
modern art; monasticism, scholasticism, the Papacy, even sceptical
and destructive criticism stir up defenders of the faith.
Shakespeare, Richard III, 5:1—“Thus doth he force the swords of
wicked men To turn their own points on their masters’ bosoms”;
Hamlet, 1:2—“Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o’erwhelm
them, to men’s eyes”; Macbeth, 1:7—“Even handed justice Commends
the ingredients of the poisoned chalice To our own lips.”

The Emperor of Germany went to Paris incognito and returned,
thinking that no one had known of his absence. But at every step,
going and coming, he was surrounded by detectives who saw that no
harm came to him. The swallow drove again and again at the little
struggling moth, but there was a plate glass window between them
which neither one of them knew. Charles Darwin put his cheek
against the plate glass of the cobra’s cage, but could not keep
himself from starting when the cobra struck. Tacitus, Annales,
14:5—“Noctem sideribus illustrem, quasi convinsendum ad scelus,
dii præbuere”—“a night brilliant with stars, as if for the purpose
of proving the crime, was granted by the gods.” See F. A. Noble,
Our Redemption, 59-76, on the self-registry and self-disclosure of
sin, with quotation from Daniel Webster’s speech in the case of
Knapp at Salem: “It must be confessed. It will be confessed. There
is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is
confession.”

(_c_) In cases of persistent iniquity, God’s providence still compels the
sinner to accomplish the design with which he and all things have been
created, namely, the manifestation of God’s holiness. Even though he
struggle against God’s plan, yet he must by his very resistance serve it.
His sin is made its own detector, judge, and tormentor. His character and
doom are made a warning to others. Refusing to glorify God in his
salvation, he is made to glorify God in his destruction.

_Is. 10:5, 7_—“_Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in
whose hand is mine indignation!... Howbeit, he meaneth not so._”
Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago: “He [Treluddra] is one of those
base natures, whom fact only lashes into greater fury,—a Pharaoh,
whose heart the Lord himself can only harden”—here we would add
the qualification: “consistently with the limits which he has set
to the operations of his grace.” Pharaoh’s ordering the
destruction of the Israelitish children (_Ex. 1:16_) was made the
means of putting Moses under royal protection, of training him for
his future work, and finally of rescuing the whole nation whose
sons Pharaoh sought to destroy. So God brings good out of evil;
see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 28-35. Emerson: “My will
fulfilled shall be, For in daylight as in dark My thunderbolt has
eyes to see His way home to the mark.” See also Edwards, Works,
4:300-312.

_Col. 2:15_—“_having stripped off from himself the principalities
and the powers_”—the hosts of evil spirits that swarmed upon him
in their final onset—“_he made a show of them openly, triumphing
over them in it_,” _i. e._, in the cross, thus turning their evil
into a means of good. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy,
443,—“Love, seeking for absolute evil, is like an electric light
engaged in searching for a shadow,—when Love gets there, the
shadow has disappeared.” But this means, not that all things _are_
good, but that “_all things work together __ for good_” (_Rom.
8:28_)—God overruling for good that which in itself is only evil.
John Wesley: “God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.”
Sermon on “The Devil’s Mistakes”: Satan thought he could overcome
Christ in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross. He
triumphed when he cast Paul into prison. But the cross was to
Christ a lifting up, that should draw all men to him (_John
12:32_), and Paul’s imprisonment furnished his epistles to the New
Testament.

“It is one of the wonders of divine love that even our blemishes
and sins God will take when we truly repent of them and give them
into his hands, and will in some way make them to be blessings. A
friend once showed Ruskin a costly handkerchief on which a blot of
ink had been made. ‘Nothing can be done with that,’ the friend
said, thinking the handkerchief worthless and ruined now. Ruskin
carried it away with him, and after a time sent it back to his
friend. In a most skilful and artistic way, he had made a fine
design in India ink, using the blot as its basis. Instead of being
ruined, the handkerchief was made far more beautiful and valuable.
So God takes the blots and stains upon our lives, the disfiguring
blemishes, when we commit them to him, and by his marvellous grace
changes them into marks of beauty. David’s grievous sin was not
only forgiven, but was made a transforming power in his life.
Peter’s pitiful fall became a step upward through his Lord’s
forgiveness and gentle dealing.” So “men may rise on stepping
stones Of their dead selves to higher things” (Tennyson, In
Memoriam, I).

Section IV.—Good And Evil Angels.

As ministers of divine providence there is a class of finite beings,
greater in intelligence and power than man in his present state, some of
whom positively serve God’s purpose by holiness and voluntary execution of
his will, some negatively, by giving examples to the universe of defeated
and punished rebellion, and by illustrating God’s distinguishing grace in
man’s salvation.

The scholastic subtleties which encumbered this doctrine in the Middle
Ages, and the exaggerated representations of the power of evil spirits
which then prevailed, have led, by a natural reaction, to an undue
depreciation of it in more recent times.

For scholastic discussions, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa (ed. Migne),
1:833-993. The scholastics debated the questions, how many angels
could stand at once on the point of a needle (relation of angels
to space); whether an angel could be in two places at the same
time; how great was the interval between the creation of angels
and their fall; whether the sin of the first angel caused the sin
of the rest; whether as many retained their integrity as fell;
whether our atmosphere is the place of punishment for fallen
angels; whether guardian-angels have charge of children from
baptism, from birth, or while the infant is yet in the womb of the
mother; even the excrements of angels were subjects of discussion,
for if there was “_angels’ food_” (_Ps. 78:25_), and if angels ate
(_Gen. 18:8_), it was argued that we must take the logical
consequences.

Dante makes the creation of angels simultaneous with that of the
universe at large. “The fall of the rebel angels he considers to
have taken place within twenty seconds of their creation, and to
have originated in the pride which made Lucifer unwilling to await
the time prefixed by his Maker for enlightening him with perfect
knowledge”—see Rossetti, Shadow of Dante, 14, 15. Milton, unlike
Dante, puts the creation of angels ages before the creation of
man. He tells us that Satan’s first name in heaven is now lost.
The sublime associations with which Milton surrounds the adversary
diminish our abhorrence of the evil one. Satan has been called the
hero of the Paradise Lost. Dante’s representation is much more
true to Scripture. But we must not go to the extreme of giving
ludicrous designations to the devil. This indicates and causes
scepticism as to his existence.

In mediæval times men’s minds were weighed down by the terror of
the spirit of evil. It was thought possible to sell one’s soul to
Satan, and such compacts were written with blood. Goethe
represents Mephistopheles as saying to Faust: “I to thy service
here agree to bind me, To run and never rest at call of thee; When
_over yonder_ thou shalt find me, Then thou shalt do as much for
me.” The cathedrals cultivated and perpetuated this superstition,
by the figures of malignant demons which grinned from the
gargoyles of their roofs and the capitals of their columns, and
popular preaching exalted Satan to the rank of a rival god—a god
more feared than was the true and living God. Satan was pictured
as having horns and hoofs—an image of the sensual and
bestial—which led Cuvier to remark that the adversary could not
devour, because horns and hoofs indicated not a carnivorous but a
ruminant quadruped.

But there is certainly a possibility that the ascending scale of
created intelligences does not reach its topmost point in man. As
the distance between man and the lowest forms of life is filled in
with numberless gradations of being, so it is possible that
between man and God there exist creatures of higher than human
intelligence. This possibility is turned to certainty by the
express declarations of Scripture. The doctrine is interwoven with
the later as well as with the earlier books of revelation.

Quenstedt (Theol., 1:629) regards the existence of angels as
antecedently probable, because there are no gaps in creation;
nature does not proceed _per saltum_. As we have (1) beings purely
corporeal, as stones; (2) beings partly corporeal and partly
spiritual, as men: so we should expect in creation (3) beings
wholly spiritual, as angels. Godet, in his Biblical Studies of the
O. T., 1-29, suggests another series of gradations. As we have (1)
vegetables—species without individuality; (2)
animals—individuality in bondage to species; and (3) men—species
overpowered by individuality: so we may expect (4)
angels—individuality without species.

If souls live after death, there is certainly a class of
disembodied spirits. It is not impossible that God may have
_created_ spirits without bodies. E. G. Robinson, Christian
Theology, 110—“The existence of lesser deities in all heathen
mythologies, and the disposition of man everywhere to believe in
beings superior to himself and inferior to the supreme God, is a
presumptive argument in favor of their existence.” Locke: “That
there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us
than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to
me from hence, that in all the visible and corporeal world we see
no chasms and gaps.” Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 193—“A
man may certainly believe in the existence of angels upon the
testimony of one who claims to have come from the heavenly world,
if he can believe in the Ornithorhyncus upon the testimony of
travelers.” Tennyson, Two Voices: “This truth within thy mind
rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better,
boundless worse. Think you this world of hopes and fears Could
find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million
spheres?”

The doctrine of angels affords a barrier against the false
conception of this world as including the whole spiritual
universe. Earth is only part of a larger organism. As Christianity
has united Jew and Gentile, so hereafter will it blend our own and
other orders of creation: _Col. 2:10_—“_who is the head of all
principality and power_”—Christ is the head of angels as well as
of men; _Eph. 1:10_—“_to sum up all things in Christ, the things
in the heavens, and the things upon the earth._” On Christ and
Angels, see Robertson Smith in The Expositor, second series, vols.
1, 2, 3. On the general subject of angels, see also Whately, Good
and Evil Angels; Twesten, transl. in Bib. Sac., 1:768, and 2:108;
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:282-337, and 3:251-354; Birks,
Difficulties of Belief, 78 sq.; Scott, Existence of Evil Spirits;
Herzog, Encyclopädie, arts.: Engel, Teufel; Jewett,
Diabolology,—the Person and Kingdom of Satan; Alexander, Demonic
Possession.

I. Scripture Statements and Imitations.

1. As to the nature and attributes of angels.

(_a_) They are created beings.

_Ps. 148:2-5_—“_Praise ye him, all his angels.... For he
commanded, and they were created_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_for in him were
all things created ... whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or powers_”; _cf._ _1 Pet. 3:32_—“_angels and
authorities and powers._” God alone is uncreated and eternal. This
is implied in _1 Tim. 6:16_—“_who only hath immortality._”

(_b_) They are incorporeal beings.

In _Heb. 1:14_, where a single word is used to designate angels,
they are described as “_spirits_”—“_are they not all ministering
spirits?_” Men, with their twofold nature, material as well as
immaterial, could not well be designated as “_spirits_.” That
their being characteristically “_spirits_” forbids us to regard
angels as having a bodily organism, seems implied in _Eph.
6:12_—“_for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but
against ... the spiritual hosts_ [or “_things_”] _of wickedness in
the heavenly places_”; cf. _Eph. 1:3_; _2:6_. In _Gen. 6:2_,
“_sons of God_” =, not angels, but descendants of Seth and
worshipers of the true God (see Murphy, Com., _in loco_). In _Ps.
78:25_ (A. V.), “_angels’ food_” = manna coming from heaven where
angels dwell; better, however, read with Rev. Vers.: “_bread of
the mighty_”—probably meaning angels, though the word “_mighty_”
is nowhere else applied to them; possibly = “bread of princes or
nobles,” _i. e._, the finest, most delicate bread. _Mat
22:30_—“_neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as
angels in heaven_”—and _Luke 20:36_—“_neither can they die any
more: for they are equal unto the angels_”—imply only that angels
are without distinctions of sex. Saints are to be like angels, not
as being incorporeal, but as not having the same sexual relations
which they have here.

There are no “souls of angels,” as there are “_souls of men_”
(_Rev. 18:13_), and we may infer that angels have no bodies for
souls to inhabit; see under Essential Elements of Human Nature.
Nevius, Demon-Possession, 258, attributes to evil spirits an
instinct or longing for a body to possess, even though it be the
body of an inferior animal: “So in Scripture we have spirits
represented as wandering about to seek rest in bodies, and asking
permission to enter into swine” (_Mat. 12:43; 8:31_). Angels
therefore, since they have no bodies, know nothing of growth, age,
or death. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 133—“It is precisely
because the angels are only spirits, but not souls, that they
cannot possess the same rich existence as man, whose soul is the
point of union in which spirit and nature meet.”

(_c_) They are personal—that is, intelligent and voluntary—agents.

_2 Sam. 14:20_—“_wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of
God_”; _Luke 4:34_—“_I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of
God_”; _2 Tim. 2:26_—“_snare of the devil ... taken captive by him
unto his will_”; _Rev. 22:9_—“_See thou do it not_” = exercise of
will; _Rev. 12:12_—“_The devil is gone down unto you, having great
wrath_” = set purpose of evil.

(_d_) They are possessed of superhuman intelligence and power, yet an
intelligence and power that has its fixed limits.

_Mat. 24:36_—“_of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the
angels of heaven_” = their knowledge, though superhuman, is yet
finite. _1 Pet. 1:12_—“_which things angels desire to look into_”;
_Ps. 103:20_—“_angels ... mighty in strength_”; _2 Thess.
1:7_—“_the angels of his power_”; _2 Pet. 2:11_—“_angels, though
greater_ [than men] _in might and power_”; _Rev. 20:2, 10_—“_laid
hold on the dragon ... and bound him ... cast into the lake of
fire._” Compare _Ps. 72:18_—“_God ... Who only doeth wondrous
things_” = only God can perform miracles. Angels are imperfect
compared with God (_Job 4:18; 15:15; 25:5_).

Power, rather than beauty or intelligence, is their striking
characteristic. They are “_principalities and powers_” (_Col.
1:16_). They terrify those who behold them (_Mat. 28:4_). The
rolling away of the stone from the sepulchre took strength. A
wheel of granite, eight feet in diameter and one foot thick,
rolling in a groove, would weigh more than four tons. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 86—“The spiritual might and burning indignation in
the face of Stephen reminded the guilty Sanhedrin of an angelic
vision.” Even in their tenderest ministrations they strengthen
(_Luke 22:43_; _cf._ _Dan. 10:19_). In _1 Tim. 6:15_—“_King of
kings and Lord of lords_”—the words “_kings_” and “_lords_”
(βασιλευόντων and κυριευόντων) may refer to angels. In the case of
evil spirits especially, power seems the chief thing in mind, _e.
g._, “_the prince of this world_,” “_the strong man armed_,” “_the
power of darkness_,” “_rulers of the darkness of this world_,”
“_the great dragon,_” “_all the power of the enemy_,” “_all these
things will I give thee_,” “_deliver us from the evil one_.”

(_e_) They are an order of intelligences distinct from man and older than
man.

Angels are distinct from man. _1 Cor. 6:3_—“_we shall judge
angels_”; _Heb. 1:14_—“_Are they not all ministering spirits, sent
forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit
salvation?_” They are not glorified human spirits; see _Heb.
2:16_—“_for verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth
help to __ the seed of Abraham_”; also _12:22, 23_, where “_the
innumerable hosts of angels_” are distinguished from “_the church
of the firstborn_” and “_the spirits of just men made perfect_.”
In _Rev. 22:9_—“_I am a fellow-servant with
thee_”—“_fellow-servant_” intimates likeness to men, not in
nature, but in service and subordination to God, the proper object
of worship. Sunday School Times, Mch. 15, 1902:146—“Angels are
spoken of as greater in power and might than man, but that could
be said of many a lower animal, or even of whirlwind and fire.
Angels are never spoken of as a superior order of spiritual
beings. We are to ‘_judge angels_’ (_1 Cor. 6:3_), and inferiors
are not to judge superiors.”

Angels are an order of intelligences older than man. The Fathers
made the creation of angels simultaneous with the original calling
into being of the elements, perhaps basing their opinion on the
apocryphal Ecclesiasticus, 18:1—“he that liveth eternally created
all things together.” In _Job 38:7_, the Hebrews parallelism makes
“_morning stars_”—“_sons of God,_” so that angels are spoken of as
present at certain stages of God’s creative work. The mention of
“_the serpent_” in _Gen. 3:1_ implies the fall of Satan before the
fall of man. We may infer that the creation of angels took place
before the creation of man—the lower before the higher. In _Gen.
2:1_, “_all the host of them,_” which God had created, may be
intended to include angels. Man was the crowning work of creation,
created after angels were created. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
81—“Angels were perhaps created before the material heavens and
earth—a spiritual substratum in which the material things were
planted, a preparatory creation to receive what was to follow. In
the vision of Jacob they ascend first and descend after; their
natural place is in the world below.”

The constant representation of angels as personal beings in Scripture
cannot be explained as a personification of abstract good and evil, in
accommodation to Jewish superstitions, without wresting many narrative
passages from their obvious sense; implying on the part of Christ either
dissimulation or ignorance as to an important point of doctrine; and
surrendering belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament from which
these Jewish views of angelic beings were derived.

Jesus accommodated himself to the popular belief in respect at
least to “_Abraham’s bosom_” (_Luke 16:22_), and he confessed
ignorance with regard to the time of the end (_Mark 13:32_); see
Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 245-248. But in the former
case his hearers probably understood him to speak figuratively and
rhetorically, while in the latter case there was no teaching of
the false but only limitation of knowledge with regard to the
true. Our Lord did not hesitate to contradict Pharisaic belief in
the efficacy of ceremonies, and Sadducean denial of resurrection
and future life. The doctrine of angels had even stronger hold
upon the popular mind than had these errors of the Pharisees and
Sadducees. That Jesus did not correct or deny the general belief,
but rather himself expressed and confirmed it, implies that the
belief was rational and Scriptural. For one of the best statements
of the argument for the existence of evil spirits, see Broadus,
Com. on _Mat. 8:28_.

_Eph. 3:10_—“_to the intent that now unto the principalities and
the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the
church the manifold wisdom of God_”—excludes the hypothesis that
angels are simply abstract conceptions of good or evil. We speak
of “moon-struck” people (lunatics), only when we know that nobody
supposes us to believe in the power of the moon to cause madness.
But Christ’s contemporaries _did_ suppose him to believe in
angelic spirits, good and evil. If this belief was an error, it
was by no means a harmless one, and the benevolence as well as the
veracity of Christ would have led him to correct it. So too, if
Paul had known that there were no such beings as angels, he could
not honestly have contented himself with forbidding the Colossians
to worship them (_Col 2:18_) but would have denied their
existence, as he denied the existence of heathen gods (_1 Cor.
8:4_).

Theodore Parker said it was very evident that Jesus Christ
believed in a personal devil. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums,
35—“There can be no doubt that Jesus shared with his
contemporaries the representation of two kingdoms, the kingdom of
God and the kingdom of the devil.” Wendt, Teaching of Jesus,
1:164—Jesus “makes it appear as if Satan was the immediate
tempter. I am far from thinking that he does so in a merely
figurative way. Beyond all doubt Jesus accepted the contemporary
ideas as to the real existence of Satan, and accordingly, in the
particular cases of disease referred to, he supposes a real
Satanic temptation.” Maurice, Theological Essays, 32, 34—“The
acknowledgment of an evil spirit is characteristic of
Christianity.” H. B. Smith, System, 261—“It would appear that the
power of Satan in the world reached its culminating point at the
time of Christ, and has been less ever since.”

The same remark applies to the view which regards Satan as but a
collective term for all evil beings, human or superhuman. The Scripture
representations of the progressive rage of the great adversary, from his
first assault on human virtue in Genesis to his final overthrow in
Revelation, join with the testimony of Christ just mentioned, to forbid
any other conclusion than this, that there is a personal being of great
power, who carries on organized opposition to the divine government.

Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 299 sq.—“We well say ‘personal
devil,’ for there is no devil but personality.” We cannot deny the
personality of Satan except upon principles which would compel us
to deny the existence of good angels, the personality of the Holy
Spirit, and the personality of God the Father,—we may add, even
the personality of the human soul. Says Nigel Penruddock in Lord
Beaconsfield’s “Endymion”: “Give me a single argument against his
[Satan’s] personality, which is not applicable to the personality
of the Deity.” One of the most ingenious devices of Satan is that
of persuading men that he has no existence. Next to this is the
device of substituting for belief in a personal devil the belief
in a merely impersonal spirit of evil. Such a substitution we find
in Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:311—“The idea of the
devil was a welcome expedient for the need of advanced religious
reflection, to put God out of relation to the evil and badness of
the world.” Pfleiderer tells us that the early optimism of the
Hebrews, like that of the Greeks, gave place in later times to
pessimism and despair. But the Hebrews still had hope of
deliverance by the Messiah and an apocalyptic reign of good.

For the view that Satan is merely a collective term for all evil
beings, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 131-137.
Bushnell, holding moral evil to be a necessary “condition
privative” of all finite beings as such, believes that “good
angels have all been passed through and helped up out of a fall,
as the redeemed of mankind will be.” “_Elect angels_” (_1 Tim.
5:21_) then would mean those saved _after_ falling, not those
saved _from_ falling; and “_Satan_” would be, not the name of a
particular person, but the all or total of all bad minds and
powers. _Per contra_, see Smith’s Bible Dictionary, arts.: Angels,
Demons, Demoniacs, Satan; Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 16-26.
For a comparison of Satan in the Book of Job, with Milton’s Satan
in “Paradise Lost,” and Goethe’s Mephistopheles in “Faust,” see
Masson, The Three Devils. We may add to this list Dante’s Satan
(or Dis) in the “Divine Comedy,” Byron’s Lucifer in “Cain,” and
Mrs. Browning’s Lucifer in her “Drama of Exile”; see Gregory,
Christian Ethics, 219.

2. As to their number and organization.

(_a_) They are of great multitude.

_Deut. 33:2_—“_Jehovah ... came from the ten thousands of holy
ones_”; _Ps. 68:17_—“_The chariots of God are twenty thousand,
even thousands upon thousands_”; _Dan. 7:10_—“_thousands of
thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand
stood before him_”; _Rev. 5:11_—“_I heard a voice of many angels
... and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand,
and thousands of thousands._” Anselm thought that the number of
lost angels was filled up by the number of elect men. Savage, Life
after Death, 61—The Pharisees held very exaggerated notions of the
number of angelic spirits. They “said that a man, if he threw a
stone over his shoulder or cast away a broken piece of pottery,
asked pardon of any spirit that he might possibly have hit in so
doing.” So in W. H. H. Murray’s time it was said to be dangerous
in the Adirondack to fire a gun,—you might hit a man.

(_b_) They constitute a company, as distinguished from a race.

_Mat. 22:30_—“_they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but
are as angels in heaven_”; _Luke 20:36_—“_neither can they die any
more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God._”
We are called “_sons of men_,” but angels are never called “_sons
of angels_,” but only “_sons of God_.” They are not developed from
one original stock, and no such common nature binds them together
as binds together the race of man. They have no common character
and history. Each was created separately, and each apostate angel
fell by himself. Humanity fell all at once in its first father.
Cut down a tree, and you cut down its branches. But angels were so
many separate trees. Some lapsed into sin, but some remained holy.
See Godet, Bib. Studies O. T., 1-29. This may be one reason why
salvation was provided for fallen man, but not for fallen angels.
Christ could join himself to humanity by taking the common nature
of all. There was no common nature of angels which he could take.
See _Heb. 2:16_—“_not to angels doth he give help._” The angels
are “_sons of God_,” as having no earthly parentage and no
parentage at all except the divine. _Eph. 3:14, 15_—“_the Father,
of whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,_”—not
“_every family_,” as in R. V., for there are no families among the
angels. The marginal rendering “_fatherhood_” is better than
“_family_,”—all the πατριαί are named from the πατήρ. Dodge,
Christian Theology, 172—“The bond between angels is simply a
mental and moral one. They can gain nothing by inheritance,
nothing through domestic and family life, nothing through a
society held together by a bond of blood.... Belonging to two
worlds and not simply to one, the human soul has in it the springs
of a deeper and wider experience than angels can have.... God
comes nearer to man than to his angels.” Newman Smyth, Through
Science to Faith, 191—“In the resurrection life of man, the
species has died; man the individual lives on. Sex shall be no
more needed for the sake of life; they shall no more marry, but
men and women, the children of marriage, shall be as the angels.
Through the death of the human species shall be gained, as the
consummation of all, the immortality of the individuals.”

(_c_) They are of various ranks and endowments.

_Col. 1:16_—“_thrones or dominions or principalities or powers_”;
_1 Thess. 4:16_—“_the voice of the archangel_”; _Jude 9_—“_Michael
the archangel._” Michael (= who is like God?) is the only one
expressly called an archangel in Scripture, although Gabriel (=
God’s hero) has been called an archangel by Milton. In Scripture,
Michael seems the messenger of law and judgment; Gabriel, the
messenger of mercy and promise. The fact that Scripture has but
one archangel is proof that its doctrine of angels was not, as has
sometimes been charged, derived from Babylonian and Persian
sources; for there we find seven archangels instead of one. There,
moreover, we find the evil spirit enthroned as a god, while in
Scripture he is represented as a trembling slave.

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:51—“The devout and trustful
consciousness of the immediate nearness of God, which is expressed
in so many beautiful utterances of the Psalmist, appears to be
supplanted in later Judaism by a belief in angels, which is
closely analogous to the superstitious belief in the saints on the
part of the Romish church. It is very significant that the Jews in
the time of Jesus could no longer conceive of the promulgation of
the law on Sinai, which was to them the foundation of their whole
religion, as an immediate revelation of Jehovah to Moses, except
as instituted through the mediation of angels (_Acts 7:38, 53_;
_Gal. 3:19_; _Heb. 2:2_; Josephus, Ant. 15:5, 3).”

(_d_) They have an organization.

_1 Sam. 1:11_—“_Jehovah of hosts_”; _1 K. 22:19_—“_Jehovah sitting
on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his
right hand and on his left_”; _Mat. 26:53_—“_twelve legions of
angels_”—suggests the organization of the Roman army;
_25:41_—“_the devil and his angels_”; _Eph. 2:2_—“_the prince of
the powers in the air_”; _Rev. 2:13_—“_Satan’s throne_” (not
“_seat_”); _16:10_—“_throne of the beast_”—“a hellish parody of
the heavenly kingdom” (Trench). The phrase “_host of heaven_,” in
_Deut. 4:19_; _17:3_; _Acts 7:42_, probably = the stars; but in
_Gen. 32:2_, “_God’s host_” = angels, for when Jacob saw the
angels he said “_this is God’s host_.” In general the phrases
“_God of hosts_”, “_Lord of hosts_” seem to mean “God of angels”,
“Lord of angels”: compare _2 Chron. 18:18_; _Luke 2:13_; _Rev.
19:14_—“_the armies which are in heaven._” Yet in _Neh. 9:6_ and
_Ps. 33:6_ the word “_host_” seems to include both angels and
stars.

Satan is “the ape of God.” He has a throne. He is “_the prince of
the world_” (_John 14:30; 16:11_), “_the prince of the powers of
the air_” (_Eph. 2:2_). There is a cosmos and order of evil, as
well as a cosmos and order of good, though Christ is stronger than
the strong man armed (_Luke 11:21_) and rules even over Satan. On
Satan in the Old Testament, see art. by T. W. Chambers, in Presb.
and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34. The first mention of Satan is in
the account of the Fall in _Gen. 3:1-15_; the second in _Lev.
16:8_, where one of the two goats on the day of atonement is said
to be “_for Azazel_,” or Satan; the third where Satan moved David
to number Israel (_1 Chron. 21:1_); the fourth in the book of _Job
1:6-12_; the fifth in _Zech. 3:1-3_, where Satan stands as the
adversary of Joshua the high priest, but Jehovah addresses Satan
and rebukes him. Cheyne, Com. on Isaiah, vol. 1, p. 11, thinks
that the stars were first called the hosts of God, with the notion
that they were animated creatures. In later times the belief in
angels threw into the background the belief in the stars as
animated beings; the angels however were connected very closely
with the stars. Marlowe, in his Tamburlaine, says: “The moon, the
planets, and the meteors light, These angels in their crystal
armor fight A doubtful battle.”

With regard to the “cherubim” of Genesis, Exodus, and Ezekiel,—with which
the “seraphim” of Isaiah and the “living creatures” of the book of
Revelation are to be identified,—the most probable interpretation is that
which regards them, not as actual beings of higher rank than man, but as
symbolic appearances, intended to represent redeemed humanity, endowed
with all the creature perfections lost by the Fall, and made to be the
dwelling-place of God.

Some have held that the cherubim are symbols of the divine
attributes, or of God’s government over nature; see Smith’s Bib.
Dict., art.: Cherub; Alford, Com. on _Rev. 4:6-8_, and Hulsean
Lectures, 1841: vol. 1, Lect. 2; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:278. But
whatever of truth belongs to this view may be included in the
doctrine stated above. The cherubim are indeed symbols of nature
pervaded by the divine energy and subordinated to the divine
purposes, but they are symbols of nature only because they are
symbols of man in his twofold capacity of _image of God_ and
_priest of nature_. Man, as having a body, is a part of nature; as
having a soul, he emerges from nature and gives to nature a voice.
Through man, nature, otherwise blind and dead, is able to
appreciate and to express the Creator’s glory.

The doctrine of the cherubim embraces the following points: 1. The
cherubim are not personal beings, but are artificial, temporary,
symbolic figures. 2. While they are not themselves personal
existences, they are symbols of personal existence—symbols not of
divine or angelic perfections but of human nature (_Ex.
1:5_—“_they had the likeness of a man_”; _Rev. 5:9_—A. V.—“_thou
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood_”—so read א, B, and
Tregelles; the Eng. and Am. Rev. Vers., however, follow A and
Tischendorf, and omit the word “_us_”). 3. They are emblems of
human nature, not in its present stage of development, but
possessed of all its original perfections; for this reason the
most perfect animal forms—the kinglike courage of the lion, the
patient service of the ox, the soaring insight of the eagle—are
combined with that of man (_Ez. 1_ and _10_; _Rev. 4:6-8_). 4.
These cherubic forms represent, not merely material or earthly
perfections, but human nature spiritualized and sanctified. They
are “_living creatures_” and their life is a holy life of
obedience to the divine will (_Ez. 1:12_—“_whither the spirit was
to go, they went_”). 5. They symbolize a human nature exalted to
be the dwelling-place of God. Hence the inner curtains of the
tabernacle were inwoven with cherubic figures, and God’s glory was
manifested on the mercy-seat between the cherubim (_Ex. 37:6-9_).
While the flaming sword at the gates of Eden was the symbol of
justice, the cherubim were symbols of mercy—keeping the “_way of
the tree of life_” for man, until by sacrifice and renewal
Paradise should be regained (_Gen. 3:24_).

In corroboration of this general view, note that angels and
cherubim never go together; and that in the closing visions of the
book of Revelation these symbolic forms are seen no longer. When
redeemed humanity has entered heaven, the figures which typified
that humanity, having served their purpose, finally disappear. For
fuller elaboration, see A. H. Strong, The Nature and Purpose of
the Cherubim, in Philosophy and Religion, 391-399; Fairbairn,
Typology, 1:185-208; Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:87; Bib. Sac.,
1876:32-51; Bib. Com., 1:49-52—“The winged lions, eagles, and
bulls, that guard the entrances of the palace of Nineveh, are
worshipers rather than divinities.” It has lately been shown that
the winged bull of Assyria was called “Kerub” almost as far back
as the time of Moses. The word appears in its Hebrew form 500
years before the Jews had any contact with the Persian dominion.
The Jews did not derive it from any Aryan race. It belonged to
their own language.

The variable form of the cherubim seems to prove that they are
symbolic appearances rather than real beings. A parallel may be
found in classical literature. In Horace, Carmina, 3:11, 15,
Cerberus has three heads; in 2:13, 34, he has a hundred. Bréal,
Semantics suggests that the three heads may be dog-heads, while
the hundred heads may be snake-heads. But Cerberus is also
represented in Greece as having only one head. Cerberus must
therefore be a symbol rather than an actually existing creature.
H. W. Congdon of Wyoming, N. Y., held, however, that the cherubim
are symbols of God’s life in the universe as a whole. _Ez.
28:14-19_—“_the anointed cherub that covereth_”—the power of the
King of Tyre was so all-pervading throughout his dominion, his
sovereignty so absolute, and his decrees so instantly obeyed, that
his rule resembled the divine government over the world. Mr.
Congdon regarded the cherubim as a proof of monism. See
Margoliouth, The Lord’s Prayer, 159-180. On animal characteristics
in man, see Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105.

3. As to their moral character.

(_a_) They were all created holy.

_Gen. 1:31_—“_God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it
was very good_”; _Jude 6_—“_angels that kept not their own
beginning_”—ἀρχήν seems here to mean their beginning in holy
character, rather than their original lordship and dominion.

(_b_) They had a probation.

This we infer from _1 Tim. 5:21_—“_the elect angels_”; _cf._ _1
Pet. 1:1, 2_—“_elect ... unto obedience._” If certain angels, like
certain men, are “_elect ... unto obedience_,” it would seem to
follow that there was a period of probation, during which their
obedience or disobedience determined their future destiny; see
Ellicott on _1 Tim. 5:21_. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
106-108—“_Gen. 3:14_—‘_Because thou hast done this, cursed art
thou_’—in the sentence on the serpent, seems to imply that Satan’s
day of grace was ended when he seduced man. Thenceforth he was
driven to live on dust, to triumph only in sin, to pick up a
living out of man, to possess man’s body or soul, to tempt from
the good.”

(_c_) Some preserved their integrity.

_Ps. 89:7_—“_the council of the holy ones_”—a designation of
angels; _Mark 8:38_—“_the holy angels._” Shakespeare, Macbeth,
4:3—“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.”

(_d_) Some fell from their state of innocence.

_John 8:44_—“_He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth
not in the truth, because there is no truth in him_”; _2 Pet.
2:4_—“_angels when they sinned_”; _Jude 6_—“_angels who kept not
their own beginning, but left their proper habitation._”
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, 3:2—“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away
ambition; By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, The image
of his Maker, hope to win by it?... How wretched Is that poor man
that hangs on princes’ favors!... When he falls, he falls like
Lucifer, Never to hope again.”

(_e_) The good are confirmed in good.

_Mat. 6:10_—“_Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth_”;
_18:10_—“_in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my
Father who is in heaven_”; _2 Cor. 11:14_—“_an angel of light._”

(_f_) The evil are confirmed in evil.

_Mat. 13:19_—“_the evil one_”; _1 John 5:18, 19_—“_the evil one
toucheth him not ... the whole world lieth in the evil one_”;
_cf._ _John 8:44_—“_Ye are of your father the devil ... When he
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the
father thereof_”; _Mat. 6:13_—“_deliver us from the evil one._”

From these Scriptural statements we infer that all free creatures
pass through a period of probation; that probation does not
necessarily involve a fall; that there is possible a sinless
development of moral beings. Other Scriptures seem to intimate
that the revelation of God in Christ is an object of interest and
wonder to other orders of intelligence than our own; that they are
drawn in Christ more closely to God and to us; in short, that they
are confirmed in their integrity by the cross. See _1 Pet.
1:12_—“_which things angels desire to look into_”; _Eph.
3:10_—“_that now unto the principalities and the powers in the
heavenly places might be made known through the church the
manifold wisdom of God_”; _Col. 1:20_—“_through him to reconcile
all things unto himself ... whether things upon the earth, or
things in the heavens_”; _Eph. 1:10_—“_to sum up all things in
Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the
earth_”—“the unification of the whole universe in Christ as the
divine centre.... The great system is a harp all whose strings are
in tune but one, and that one jarring string makes discord
throughout the whole. The whole universe shall feel the influence,
and shall be reduced to harmony, when that one string, the world
in which we live, shall be put in tune by the hand of love and
mercy”—freely quoted from Leitch, God’s Glory in the Heavens,
327-330.

It is not impossible that God is using this earth as a
breeding-ground from which to populate the universe. Mark Hopkins,
Life, 317—“While there shall be gathered at last and preserved, as
Paul says, a holy church, and every man shall be perfect and the
church shall be spotless.... there will be other forms of
perfection in other departments of the universe. And when the
great day of restitution shall come and God shall vindicate his
government, there may be seen to be coming in from other
departments of the universe a long procession of angelic forms,
great white legions from Sirius, from Arcturus and the chambers of
the South, gathering around the throne of God and that centre
around which the universe revolves.”

4. As to their employments.

A. The employments of good angels.

(_a_) They stand in the presence of God and worship him.

_Ps. 29:1, 2_—“_Ascribe unto Jehovah, O ye sons of the mighty,
Ascribe unto Jehovah glory and strength. Ascribe unto Jehovah the
glory due unto his name. Worship Jehovah in holy array_”—Perowne:
“Heaven being thought of as one great temple, and all the
worshipers therein as clothed in priestly vestments.” _Ps.
89:7_—“_a God very terrible in the council of the holy ones,_” _i.
e._, angels—Perowne: “Angels are called an assembly or
congregation, as the church above, which like the church below
worships and praises God.” _Mat. 18:10_—“_in heaven their angels
do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven._” In
apparent allusion to this text, Dante represents the saints as
dwelling in the presence of God yet at the same time rendering
humble service to their fellow men here upon the earth. Just in
proportion to their nearness to God and the light they receive
from him, is the influence they are able to exert over others.

(_b_) They rejoice in God’s works.

_Job 38:7_—“_all the sons of God shouted for joy_”; _Luke
15:10_—“_there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner that repenteth_”; _cf._ _2 Tim. 2:25_—“_if peradventure
God may give them repentance._” Dante represents the angels that
are nearest to God, the infinite source of life, as ever advancing
toward the spring-time of youth, so that the oldest angels are the
youngest.

(_c_) They execute God’s will,—by working in nature;

_Ps. 103:20_—“_Ye his angels ... that fulfil his word, Hearkening
unto the voice of his word_”; _104:4_ marg.—“_Who maketh his
angels winds_; _His ministers a flaming fire_,” _i. e._,
lightnings. See Alford on _Heb. 1:7_—“The order of the Hebrew
words here [in _Ps. 104:4_] is not the same as in the former
verses (see especially _v. 3_), where we have: ‘_Who maketh the
clouds his chariot_.’ For this transposition, those who insist
that the passage means ‘he maketh winds his messengers’ can give
no reason.”

Farrar on _Heb. 1:7_—“_He maketh his angels winds_”; “The Rabbis
often refer to the fact that God makes his angels assume any form
he pleases, whether man (_Gen. 18:2_) or woman (_Zech 5:9_—‘_two
women, and the wind was in their wings_’), or wind or flame (_Ex.
3:2_—‘_angel ... in a flame of fire_’; _2 K. 6:17_). But that
untenable and fleeting form of existence which is the glory of the
angels would be an inferiority in the Son. He could not be
clothed, as they are at God’s will, in the fleeting robes of
material phenomena.” John Henry Newman, in his Apologia, sees an
angel in every flower. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 82—“Origen
thought not a blade of grass nor a fly was without its angel.
_Rev. 14:18_—an angel ‘_that hath power over fire_’; _John
5:4_—intermittent spring under charge of an angel; _Mat.
28:2_—descent of an angel caused earthquake on the morning of
Christ’s resurrection; _Luke 13:11_—control of diseases is
ascribed to angels.”

(_d_) by guiding the affairs of nations;

_Dan. 10:12, 13, 21_—“_I come for thy words’ sake. But the prince
of the kingdom of Persia withstood me ... Michael, one of the
chief princes, came to help me ... Michael your prince_”;
_11:1_—“_And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I
stood up to confirm and strengthen him_”; _12:1_—“_at that time
shall Michael stand up, the great prince who standeth for the
children of thy people._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 87, suggests
the question whether “the spirit of the age” or “the national
character” in any particular case may not be due to the unseen
“principalities” under which men live. Paul certainly recognizes,
in _Eph. 2:2_, “_the prince of the powers of the air, ... the
spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience._” May not
good angels be entrusted with influence over nations’ affairs to
counteract the evil and help the good?

(_e_) by watching over the interests of particular churches;

_1 Cor. 11:10_—“_for this cause ought the women to have a sign of
authority_ [_i. e._, a veil] _on her head, because of the
angels_”—who watch over the church and have care for its order.
Matheson, Spiritual Development of St. Paul, 242—“Man’s covering
is woman’s power. Ministration _is_ her power and it allies her
with a greater than man—the angel. Christianity is a feminine
strength. Judaism had made woman only a means to an end—the
multiplication of the race. So it had degraded her. Paul will
restore woman to her original and equal dignity.” _Col.
2:18_—“_Let no man rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility
and worshiping of the angels_”—a false worship which would be very
natural if angels were present to guard the meetings of the
saints. _1 Tim. 5:21_—“_I charge thee in the sight of God, and
Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that thou observe these
things_”—the public duties of the Christian minister.

Alford regards “_the angels of the seven churches_” (_Rev. 1:20_)
as superhuman beings appointed to represent and guard the
churches, and that upon the grounds: (1) that the word is used
elsewhere in the book of Revelation only in this sense; and (2)
that nothing in the book is addressed to a teacher individually,
but all to some one who reflects the complexion and fortunes of
the church as no human person could. We prefer, however, to regard
“_the angels of the seven churches_” as meaning simply the pastors
of the seven churches. The word “_angel_” means simply
“messenger,” and may be used of human as well as of superhuman
beings—see _Hag. 1:13_—“_Haggai, Jehovah’s messenger_”—literally,
“_the angel of Jehovah_.” The use of the word in this figurative
sense would not be incongruous with the mystical character of the
book of Revelation (see Bib. Sac. 12:339). John Lightfoot, Heb.
and Talmud. Exerc., 2:90, says that “angel” was a term designating
officer or elder of a synagogue. See also Bp. Lightfoot, Com. on
Philippians, 187, 188; Jacobs, Eccl. Polity, 100 and note. In the
Irvingite church, accordingly, “angels” constitute an official
class.

(_f_) by assisting and protecting individual believers;

_1 K. 19:5_—“_an angel touched him_ [Elijah], _and said unto him,
Arise and eat_”; _Ps. 91:11_—“_he will give his angels charge over
thee, To keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in
their hands, Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone_”; _Dan.
6:22_—“_My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’
mouths, and they have not hurt me_”; _Mat. 4:11_—“_angels came and
ministered unto him_”—Jesus was the type of all believers;
_18:10_—“_despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto
you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my
Father_”; compare _verse 6_—“_one of these little ones that
believe on me_”; see Meyer, Com. _in loco_, who regards these
passages as proving the doctrine of guardian angels. _Luke
16:22_—“_the beggar died, and ... was carried away by the angels
into Abraham’s bosom_”; _Heb. 1:14_—“_Are they not all ministering
spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall
inherit salvation?_” Compare _Acts 12:15_—“_And they said, It is
his angel_”—of Peter standing knocking; see Hackett, Com. _in
loco_: the utterance “expresses a popular belief prevalent among
the Jews, which is neither affirmed nor denied.” Shakespeare,
Henry IV, 2nd part, 2:2—“For the boy—there is a good angel about
him.” _Per contra_, see Broadus, Com. on _Mat. 18:10_—“It is
simply said of believers as a class that there are angels which
are ‘_their angels_’; but there is nothing here or elsewhere to
show that one angel has special charge of one believer.”

(_g_) by punishing God’s enemies.

_2 K. 19:35_—“_it came to pass that night, that the angel of
Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an
hundred fourscore and five thousand_”; _Acts 12:23_—“_And
immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not
God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost._”

A general survey of this Scripture testimony as to the employments of good
angels leads us to the following conclusions:

First,—that good angels are not to be considered as the mediating agents
of God’s regular and common providence, but as the ministers of his
special providence in the affairs of his church. He “maketh his angels
winds” and “a flaming fire,” not in his ordinary procedure, but in
connection with special displays of his power for moral ends (Deut. 33:2;
Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2). Their intervention is apparently
occasional and exceptional—not at their own option, but only as it is
permitted or commanded by God. Hence we are not to conceive of angels as
coming between us and God, nor are we, without special revelation of the
fact, to attribute to them in any particular case the effects which the
Scriptures generally ascribe to divine providence. Like miracles,
therefore, angelic appearances generally mark God’s entrance upon new
epochs in the unfolding of his plans. Hence we read of angels at the
completion of creation (Job 38:7); at the giving of the law (Gal 3:19); at
the birth of Christ (Luke 2:13); at the two temptations in the wilderness
and in Gethsemane (Mat. 4:11, Luke 22:43); at the resurrection (Mat.
28:2); at the ascension (Acts 1:10); at the final judgment (Mat. 25:31).

The substance of these remarks may be found in Hodge, Systematic
Theology, 1:637-645. Milton tells us that “Millions of spiritual
creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we
sleep.” Whether this be true or not, it is a question of interest
why such angelic beings as have to do with human affairs are not
at present seen by men. Paul’s admonition against the “_worshiping
of the angels_” (_Col. 2:18_) seems to suggest the reason. If men
have not abstained from worshiping their fellow-men, when these
latter have been priests or media of divine communications, the
danger of idolatry would be much greater if we came into close and
constant contact with angels; see _Rev. 22:8, 9_—“_I fell down to
worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things.
And he saith unto me, See thou do it not._”

The fact that we do not in our day see angels should not make us
sceptical as to their existence any more than the fact that we do
not in our day see miracles should make us doubt the reality of
the New Testament miracles. As evil spirits were permitted to work
most actively when Christianity began its appeal to men, so good
angels were then most frequently recognized as executing the
divine purposes. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 278, thinks that evil
spirits are still at work where Christianity comes in conflict
with heathenism, and that they retire into the background as
Christianity triumphs. This may be true also of good angels.
Otherwise we might be in danger of overestimating their greatness
and authority. Father Taylor was right when he said: “Folks are
better than angels.” It is vain to sing: “I want to be an angel.”
We never shall be angels. Victor Hugo is wrong when he says: “I am
the tadpole of an archangel.” John Smith is not an angel, and he
never will be. But he may be far greater than an angel, because
Christ took, not the nature of angels, but the nature of man
(_Heb. 2:16_).

As intimated above, there is no reason to believe that even the
invisible presence of angels is a constant one. Doddridge’s dream
of accident prevented by angelic interposition seems to embody the
essential truth. We append the passages referred to in the text.
_Job 38:7_—“_When the morning stars sang together, And all the
sons of God shouted for joy_”; _Deut. 33:2_—“_Jehovah came from
Sinai ... he came from the ten thousands of holy ones: At his
right hand was a fiery law for them_”; _Gal. 3:19_—“_it_ [the law]
_was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator_”; _Heb.
2:2_—“_the word spoken through angels_”; _Acts 7:53_—“_who
received the law as it was ordained by angels_”; _Luke
2:13_—“_suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the
heavenly host_”; _Mat. 4:11_—“_Then the devil leaveth him; and
behold, angels came and ministered unto him_”; _Luke 22:43_—“_And
there appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him_”;
_Mat. 28:2_—“_an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came
and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it_”; _Acts 1:10_—“_And
while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he went,
behold, two men stood by them in white apparel_”; _Mat.
25:31_—“_when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory._”

Secondly,—that their power, as being in its nature dependent and derived,
is exercised in accordance with the laws of the spiritual and natural
world. They cannot, like God, create, perform miracles, act without means,
search the heart. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who can influence the human mind
directly, they can influence men only in ways analogous to those by which
men influence each other. As evil angels may tempt men to sin, so it is
probable that good angels may attract men to holiness.

Recent psychical researches disclose almost unlimited
possibilities of influencing other minds by suggestion. Slight
physical phenomena, as the odor of a violet or the sight in a book
of a crumpled roseleaf, may start trains of thought which change
the whole course of a life. A word or a look may have great power
over us. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 276—“The facts
of hypnotism illustrate the possibility of one mind falling into a
strange thraldom under another.” If other men can so powerfully
influence us, it is quite possible that spirits which are not
subject to limitations of the flesh may influence us yet more.

Binet, in his Alterations of Personality, says that experiments on
hysterical patients have produced in his mind the conviction that,
in them at least, “a plurality of persons exists.... We have
established almost with certainty that in such patients, side by
side with the principal personality, there is a secondary
personality, which is unknown by the first, which sees, hears,
reflects, reasons and acts”; see Andover Review, April, 1890:422.
Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 81-143, claims that we have two
minds, the objective and conscious, and the subjective and
unconscious. The latter works automatically upon suggestion from
the objective or from other minds. In view of the facts referred
to by Binet and Hudson, we claim that the influence of angelic
spirits is no more incredible than is the influence of suggestion
from living men. There is no need of attributing the phenomena of
hypnotism to spirits of the dead. Our human nature is larger and
more susceptible to spiritual influence than we have commonly
believed. These psychical phenomena indeed furnish us with a
corroboration of our Ethical Monism, for if in one human being
there may be two or more consciousnesses, then in the one God
there may be not only three infinite personalities but also
multitudinous finite personalities. See T. H. Wright, The Finger
of God, 124-133.

B. The employments of evil angels.

(_a_) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in
the names applied to their chief. The word “Satan” means
“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term “devil”
signifies “slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated
also in the description of the “man of sin” as “he that opposeth and
exalteth himself against all that is called God.”

_Job 1:6_—Satan appears among “_the sons of God_”; _Zech.
3:1_—“_Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right
hand to be his adversary_”; _Mat. 13:39_—“_the enemy that sowed
them is the devil_”; _1 Pet. 5:8_—“_your adversary the devil._”
Satan slanders God to men, in _Gen. 3:1, 4_—“_Yea, hath God
said?... Ye shall not surely die_”; men to God, in _Job 1:9,
11_—“_Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and
touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face_”;
_2:4, 5_—“_Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give
for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and
his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face_”; _Rev.
12:10_—“_the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth
them before our God night and day._”

Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to
man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who
pleads God’s cause with man and man’s cause with God: _John
16:8_—“_he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment_”; _Rom. 8:26_—“_the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as
we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered._” Hence Balaam can say: _Num.
23:21_, “_He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he
seen perverseness in Israel_”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he
resists Joshua: “_Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that
hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee_” (_Zech. 3:2_). “Thus he puts
himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse
them” (C. H. M.). For the description of the “_man of sin_,” see
_2 Thess. 2:3, 4_—“_he that opposeth_”; _cf._ _verse 9_—“_whose
coming is according to the working of Satan._”

On the “_man of sin_,” see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev.,
July, 1889:328-360. As in _Daniel 11:36_, the great enemy of the
faith, he who “_shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above
every God_”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man
of lawlessness described by Paul in _2 Thess. 2:3, 4_ was “the
corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.” This only had
its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when
the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment
does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.

Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and
the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men
possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse
tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit,
who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary,
and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan’s sifting,
and the Master’s winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity
of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit’s combination of all the forces of
matter and mind to build up the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully
armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and
the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The
opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a
reason why they are incapable of redemption.

(_b_) They hinder man’s temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by
exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by
subjecting man’s soul to temptation. Possession of man’s being, either
physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.

Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits in _Job
1:12, 16, 19_ and _2:7_—“_all that he hath is in thy power_”—and
Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes; _Luke
13:11, 16_—“_a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan
had bound, lo, these eighteen years_”; _Acts 10:38_—“_healing all
that were oppressed of the devil_”; _2 Cor. 12:7_—“_a thorn in the
flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me_”; _1 Thess. 2:18_—“_we
would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan
hindered us_”; _Heb. 2:14_—“_him that had the power of death, that
is, the devil._” Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits in _Gen.
3:1_ _sq._—“_Now the serpent was more subtle_”; _cf._ _Rev.
20:2_—“_the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan_”; _Mat.
4:3_—“_the tempter came_”; _John 13:27_—“_after the sop, then
entered Satan into him_”; _Acts 5:3_—“_why hath Satan filled thy
heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?_” _Eph. 2:2_—“_the spirit that
now worketh in the sons of disobedience_”; _1 Thess. 3:5_—“_lest
by any means the tempter had tempted you_”; _1 Pet 5:8_—“_your
adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking
whom he may devour._”

At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the
influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While
God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air
about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They
caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted
the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took
possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into
compacts, and took mortgages on men’s souls.” If some good end has
been attained in spite of them they feel that “Their labor must be
to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”
In Goethe’s Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:
“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. ’Tis written on his
face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”
Mephistopheles describes himself as “Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die
stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that
power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works
the good”—through the overruling Providence of God. “The devil
says his prayers backwards.” “He tried to learn the Basque
language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words
in two years.” Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring
in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient
compulsory immersion of Satan in it.

Satan’s temptations are represented as both negative and
positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He
controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil,
but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency
Satan may accomplish his purposes.

Satan’s negative agency is shown in _Mark 4:15_—“_when they have
heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which
hath been sown in them_”; his positive agency in _Mat. 13:38,
39_—“_the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that
sowed them is the devil._” One devil, but many angels: see _Mat.
25:41_—“_the devil and his angels_”; _Mark 5:9_—“_My name is
Legion, for we are many_”; _Eph. 2:2_—“_the prince of the powers
of the air_”; _6:12_—“_principalities ... powers ... world-rulers
of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness._” The mode of
Satan’s access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by
moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of
thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly
has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of
appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the
wilderness (_Mat. 4:3, 6, 9_), and to appeal to our love for
independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“_ye
shall be as God_” (_Gen. 3:5_).

C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil: “If
the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not
interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be
no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though
perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of
nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the
germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears,
may adopt the form of supernaturalism.” If there was no Satan,
then Christ’s temptations came from within, and showed a
predisposition to evil on his own part.

Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such
disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak
in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly
addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of
possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of
Satan’s downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the
narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal
physical or mental conditions.

Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of
the Gerasene demoniacs (_Mark 5:2-4_), or spiritual, as in the
case of the “_maid having a spirit of divination_” (_Acts 16:16_),
where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is
distinguished from bodily disease: see _Mat. 17:15,
18_—“_epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was
cured_”; _Mark 9:25_—“_Thou dumb and deaf spirit_”; _3:11,
12_—“_the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of
God. And he charged them much that they should not make him
known_”; _Luke 8:30, 31_—“_And Jesus asked him, What is thy name?
And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And
they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into
the abyss_”; _10:17, 18_—“_And the seventy returned with joy,
saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And
he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from
heaven._”

These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons
cannot be interpreted as metaphorical. “In the temptation of Christ and in
the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ was
_above_ its delusions; the brutes were _below_ them.” Farrar (Life of
Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and
agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical
interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find
corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which
one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some
modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their
patients’ experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection
of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy
Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith’s Bible
Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the
complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer’s reason or power of will; his
actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit,
till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to
produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a
dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself
yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its
apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It
is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it
is not overborne.”

T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of
demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature
and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss’s Meyer on _Mat.
4:24_, gives Meyer’s arguments against demoniacal possession as follows:
1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old
Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists;
2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no
notice of demoniacal possession in John’s Gospel, though the overcoming of
Satan is there made a part of the Messiah’s work and Satan is said to
enter into a man’s mind and take control there (_John 13:27_); 4. and that
the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic
temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen
des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to
the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed
themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed.
Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and
health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the
working of the evil one.”

On _Mark 1:21-34_, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We
are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly;
but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should
it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in
epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of
his mission?” Not Jesus’ exorcism of demons as a fact, but his
casting them out by a word, was our Lord’s wonderful
characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not
demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of
hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar
with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable of acting
upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and
psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected,
without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of
will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.” Nevius quotes F. W. A.
Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of
telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind
to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has,
as I hold, been already achieved.” See Bennet, Diseases of the
Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole’s Synopsis,
1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.

(_c_) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God’s plans of punishing
the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and
fate of moral evil.

Punishing the ungodly: _Ps. 78:49_—“_He cast upon them the
fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A
band of angels of evil_”; _1 K. 22:23_—“_Jehovah hath put a lying
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath
spoken evil concerning thee._” In _Luke 22:31_, Satan’s sifting
accomplishes the opposite of the sifter’s intention, and the same
as the Master’s winnowing (Maclaren).

Chastening the good: see _Job, chapters 1_ and _2_; _1 Cor.
5:5_—“_deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the
flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord
Jesus_”; _cf._ _1 Tim. 1:20_—“_Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I
delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to
blaspheme._” This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from
the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or
death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister
only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings
of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on _1 Cor. 5:5_, regards
“delivering to Satan” as merely putting a man out of the church by
excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him
into “the world,” of which Satan was the ruler.

Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: see
_Mat 8:29_—“_art thou come hither to torment us before the time?_”
_25:41_—“_eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his
angels_”; _2 Thess. 2:8_—“_then shall be revealed the lawless
one_”; _James 2:19_—“_the demons also believe, and shudder_”;
_Rev. 12:9, 12_—“_the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole
world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath,
knowing that he hath but a short time_”; _20:10_—“_cast into the
lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever._”

It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any
special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry,
witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world. _1 Cor.
10:20_—“_the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice
to demons, and not to God_”; _2 Thess. 2:9_—“_the working of Satan
with all power and signs of lying wonders_”—would seem to favor an
affirmative answer. But _1 Cor. 8:4_—“_concerning therefore the
eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is
anything in the world_”—seems to favor a negative answer. This
last may, however, mean that “the beings whom the idols are
designed to _represent_ have no existence, although it is
afterwards shown (_10:20_) that there are _other_ beings connected
with false worship” (Ann. Par. Bible, _in loco_). “Heathenism is
the reign of the devil” (Meyer), and while the heathen think
themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really
“_sacrificing to demons_,” and are thus furthering the plans of a
malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means
of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of
influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern
unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a
superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God.
In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts
inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and
delusion.

Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods
mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent;
but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are
demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it
is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience
and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the
sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by
the so-called witches. Let us substitute ‘devilcraft’ for
‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the
Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the
control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be
false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been
known.”

A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil
spirits leads to the following general conclusions:

First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human
will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original consent
of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and
faith in God.

_Luke 22:31, 40_—“_Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you
as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation_”; _Eph.
6:11_—“_Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to
stand against the wiles of the devil_”; _16_—“_the shield of
faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
the evil one_”; _James 4:7_—“_resist the devil, and he will flee
from you_”; _1 Pet. 5:9_—“_whom withstand stedfast in your
faith._” The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of
corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double
source of sin is illustrated in _Acts 5:3, 4_—“_Why hath Satan
filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing
in thine heart?_” The Satanic impulse could have been resisted,
and “_after it was_” suggested, it was still “_in his own power_,”
as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).

The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits
cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp.
Wordsworth: “The devil may _tempt_ us to fall, but he cannot
_make_ us fall; he may persuade us to cast _ourselves_ down, but
he cannot _cast_ us down.” E. G. Robinson: “It is left to us
whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the
devil’s shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had
the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”
Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven
nor hell can come in unless we will. “We cannot prevent the birds
from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making
their nests in our hair.” _Mat 12:43-45_—“_The unclean spirit,
when he is gone out of a man_”—suggests that the man who gets rid
of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is
ready to be repossessed. “_Seven other spirits more evil than
himself_” implies that some demons are more wicked than others and
so are harder to cast out (_Mark 9:29_). The Jews had cast out
idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.

Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot
be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong,
unless he himself voluntarily assents.” A. S. Hart: “Unless one is
willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence.
The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism
requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the
instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to
do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be
learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a
person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject
retains a consciousness of the difference between right and
wrong.”

Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the
power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often
happens to them as to Goethe’s Zauberlehrling, or
apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and
will not be again dispersed. Goethe’s Fischer—‘Half she drew him
down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for
to sink is to let one’s self sink.” Manton, the Puritan: “A
stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd
can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he
finds him most violent.” Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on
the above: “O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him
off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying: ‘_Jehovah rebuke
thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke
thee!_’ (_Zech. 3:2)_. By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray
thee, and deliver me from ‘_the power of the dog_’! (_Ps.
22:20)_.”

Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the
permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient,
nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their
agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as
evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for
harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will
vindicate God’s permission of their evil agency.

_1 Cor. 10:13_—“_God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be
tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make
also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it_”; _Jude
6_—“_angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their
proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under
darkness unto the judgment of the great day._”

Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his
skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil’s work. Was there a conflagration
in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the
flame. Pestilence and storm he attributed to Satan. All this was a relic
of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan’s power. It was then supposed that
men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power
was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe’s Faust).

Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There
seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in
temptation and possession during our Savior’s ministry, in order
that Christ’s power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus
brought “_to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the
devil_” (_Heb. 2:14)_ and “_having despoiled the principalities
and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over
them in it_,” _i. e._, in the Cross (_Col. 2:15_). _1 John
3:8_—“_To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil._” Evil spirits now exist and act
only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan’s
power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by
the fact of God’s providence; (3) by the fact of his own
wickedness.”

Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed
principle in himself nor connection with the source of order
outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance,
but he cannot foresee. So Goethe’s Mephistopheles insolently
boasts that he can lead Faust astray: ‘What will you bet? There’s
still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently
upon _my_ road to train him!’ And in _Job 1:11; 2:5_, Satan
wagers: ‘_He will renounce thee to thy face._’ ” William Ashmore:
“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes,
but with a rather loose rope.” In the Persian story, God scattered
seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon
it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.

II. Objections to the Doctrine of Angels.

1. To the doctrine of angels in general.

It is objected:

(_a_) That it is opposed to the modern scientific view of the world, as a
system of definite forces and laws.—We reply that, whatever truth there
may be in this modern view, it does not exclude the play of divine or
human free agency. It does not, therefore, exclude the possibility of
angelic agency.

Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 332—“It is easier to believe in
angels than in ether; in God rather than atoms; and in the history
of his kingdom as a divine self-revelation rather than in the
physicist’s or the biologist’s purely mechanical process of
evolution.”

(_b_) That it is opposed to the modern doctrine of infinite space above
and beneath us—a space peopled with worlds. With the surrender of the old
conception of the firmament, as a boundary separating this world from the
regions beyond, it is claimed that we must give up all belief in a heaven
of the angels.—We reply that the notions of an infinite universe, of
heaven as a definite place, and of spirits as confined to fixed locality,
are without certain warrant either in reason or in Scripture. We know
nothing of the modes of existence of pure spirits.

What we know of the universe is certainly finite. Angels are
apparently incorporeal beings, and as such are free from all laws
of matter and space. Heaven and hell are essentially conditions,
corresponding to character—conditions in which the body and the
surroundings of the soul express and reflect its inward state. The
main thing to be insisted on is therefore the state; place is
merely incidental. The fact that Christ ascended to heaven with a
human body, and that the saints are to possess glorified bodies,
would seem to imply that heaven is a place. Christ’s declaration
with regard to him who is “_able to destroy both soul and body in
hell_” (_Mat. 10:28_) affords some reason for believing that hell
is also a place.

Where heaven and hell are, is not revealed to us. But it is not
necessary to suppose that they are in some remote part of the
universe; for aught we know, they may be right about us, so that
if our eyes were opened, like those of the prophet’s servant (_2
Kings 6:17_), we ourselves should behold them. Upon ground of
_Eph. 2:2_—“_prince of the __ powers of the air_”—and _3:10_—“_the
principalities and the powers in the heavenly places_”—some have
assigned the atmosphere of the earth as the abode of angelic
spirits, both good and evil. But the expressions “_air_” and
“_heavenly places_” may be merely metaphorical designations of
their spiritual method of existence.

The idealistic philosophy, which regards time and space as merely
subjective forms of our human thinking and as not conditioning the
thought of God, may possibly afford some additional aid in the
consideration of this problem. If matter be only the expression of
God’s mind and will, having no existence apart from his
intelligence and volition, the question of place ceases to have
significance. Heaven is in that case simply the state in which God
manifests himself in his grace, and hell is the state in which a
moral being finds himself in opposition to God, and God in
opposition to him. Christ can manifest himself to his followers in
all parts of the earth and to all the inhabitants of heaven at one
and the same time (_John 14:21_; _Mat. 28:20_; _Rev. 1:7_). Angels
in like manner, being purely spiritual beings, may be free from
the laws of space and time, and may not be limited to any fixed
locality.

We prefer therefore to leave the question of place undecided, and
to accept the existence and working of angels both good and evil
as a matter of faith, without professing to understand their
relations to space. For the rationalistic view, see Strauss,
Glaubenslehre, 1:670-675. _Per contra_, see Van Oosterzee,
Christian Dogmatics, 1:308-317; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,
127-136.

2. To the doctrine of evil angels in particular.

It is objected that:

(_a_) The idea of the fall of angels is self-contradictory, since a fall
determined by pride presupposes pride—that is, a fall before the fall.—We
reply that the objection confounds the occasion of sin with the sin
itself. The outward motive to disobedience is not disobedience. The fall
took place only when that outward motive was chosen by free will. When the
motive of independence was selfishly adopted, only then did the innocent
desire for knowledge and power become pride and sin. How an evil volition
could originate in spirits created pure is an insoluble problem. Our faith
in God’s holiness, however, compels us to attribute the origin of this
evil volition, not to the Creator, but to the creature.

There can be no sinful propensity before there is sin. The reason
of the _first_ sin can not be sin itself. This would be to make
sin a necessary development; to deny the holiness of God the
Creator; to leave the ground of theism for pantheism.

(_b_) It is irrational to suppose that Satan should have been able to
change his whole nature by a single act, so that he thenceforth willed
only evil.—But we reply that the circumstances of that decision are
unknown to us; while the power of single acts permanently to change
character is matter of observation among men.

Instance the effect, upon character and life, of a single act of
falsehood or embezzlement. The first glass of intoxicating drink,
and the first yielding to impure suggestion, often establish
nerve-tracts in the brain and associations in the mind which are
not reversed and overcome for a whole lifetime. “Sow an act, and
you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a
character, and you reap a destiny.” And what is true of men, may
be also true of angels.

(_c_) It is impossible that so wise a being should enter upon a hopeless
rebellion.—We answer that no amount of mere knowledge ensures right moral
action. If men gratify present passion, in spite of their knowledge that
the sin involves present misery and future perdition, it is not impossible
that Satan may have done the same.

Scherer, Essays on English Literature, 139, puts this objection as
follows: “The idea of Satan is a contradictory idea; for it is
contradictory to know God and yet attempt rivalry with him.” But
we must remember that understanding is the servant of will, and is
darkened by will. Many clever men fail to see what belongs to
their peace. It is the very madness of sin, that it persists in
iniquity, even when it sees and fears the approaching judgment of
God. Jonathan Edwards: “Although the devil be exceedingly crafty
and subtle, yet he is one of the greatest fools and blockheads in
the world, as the subtlest of wicked men are. Sin is of such a
nature that it strangely infatuates and stultifies the mind.” One
of Ben Jonson’s plays has, for its title: “The Devil is an Ass.”

Schleiermacher, Die Christliche Glaube, 1:210, urges that
continual wickedness must have weakened Satan’s understanding, so
that he could be no longer feared, and he adds: “Nothing is easier
than to contend against emotional evil.” On the other hand, there
seems evidence in Scripture of a progressive rage and devastating
activity in the case of the evil one, beginning in Genesis and
culminating in the Revelation. With this increasing malignity
there is also abundant evidence of his unwisdom. We may instance
the devil’s mistakes in misrepresenting 1. God to man (_Gen.
3:1_—“_hath God said?_”). 2. Man to himself (_Gen. 3:4_—“_Ye shall
not surely die_”). 3. Man to God (_Job 1:9_—“_Doth Job fear God
for naught?_”). 4. God to himself (_Mat. 4:3_—“_If thou art the
Son of God_”). 5. Himself to man (_2 Cor. 11:14_—“_Satan
fashioneth himself into an angel of light_”). 6. Himself to
himself (_Rev. 12:12_—“_the devil is gone down unto you, having
great wrath_”—thinking he could successfully oppose God or destroy
man).

(_d_) It is inconsistent with the benevolence of God to create and uphold
spirits, who he knows will be and do evil.—We reply that this is no more
inconsistent with God’s benevolence than the creation and preservation of
men, whose action God overrules for the furtherance of his purposes, and
whose iniquity he finally brings to light and punishes.

Seduction of the pure by the impure, piracy, slavery, and war,
have all been permitted among men. It is no more inconsistent with
God’s benevolence to permit them among angelic spirits. Caroline
Fox tells of Emerson and Carlyle that the latter once led his
friend, the serene philosopher, through the abominations of the
streets of London at midnight, asking him with grim humor at every
few steps: “Do you believe in the devil now?” Emerson replied that
the more he saw of the English people, the greater and better he
thought them. It must have been because with such depths beneath
them they could notwithstanding reach such heights of
civilization. Even vice and misery can be overruled for good, and
the fate of evil angels may be made a warning to the universe.

(_e_) The notion of organization among evil spirits is self-contradictory,
since the nature of evil is to sunder and divide.—We reply that such
organization of evil spirits is no more impossible than the organization
of wicked men, for the purpose of furthering their selfish ends. Common
hatred to God may constitute a principle of union among them, as among
men.

Wicked men succeed in their plans only by adhering in some way to
the good. Even a robber-horde must have laws, and there is a sort
of “honor among thieves.” Else the world would be a pandemonium,
and society would be what Hobbes called it: “bellum omnium contra
omnes.” See art. on Satan, by Whitehouse, in Hastings, Dictionary
of the Bible: “Some personalities are ganglionic centres of a
nervous system, incarnations of evil influence. The Bible teaches
that Satan is such a centre.”

But the organizing power of Satan has its limitations. Nevius,
Demon-Possession, 279—“Satan is not omniscient, and it is not
certain that all demons are perfectly subject to his control. Want
of vigilance on his part, and personal ambition in them, may
obstruct and delay the execution of his plans, as among men.” An
English parliamentarian comforted himself by saying: “If the fleas
were all of one mind, they would have us out of bed.” Plato,
Lysis, 214—“The good are like one another, and friends to one
another, and the bad are never at unity with one another or with
themselves; for they are passionate and restless, and anything
which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in
union or harmony with any other thing.”

(_f_) The doctrine is morally pernicious, as transferring the blame of
human sin to the being or beings who tempt men thereto.—We reply that
neither conscience nor Scripture allows temptation to be an excuse for
sin, or regards Satan as having power to compel the human will. The
objection, moreover, contradicts our observation,—for only where the
personal existence of Satan is recognized, do we find sin recognized in
its true nature.

The diabolic character of sin makes it more guilty and abhorred.
The immorality lies, not in the maintenance, but in the denial, of
the doctrine. Giving up the doctrine of Satan is connected with
laxity in the administration of criminal justice. Penalty comes to
be regarded as only deterrent or reformatory.

(_g_) The doctrine degrades man, by representing him as the tool and slave
of Satan.—We reply that it does indeed show his actual state to be
degraded, but only with the result of exalting our idea of his original
dignity, and of his possible glory in Christ. The fact that man’s sin was
suggested from without, and not from within, may be the one mitigating
circumstance which renders possible his redemption.

It rather puts a stigma upon human nature to say that it is _not_
fallen—that its present condition is its original and normal
state. Nor is it worth while to attribute to man a dignity he does
not possess, if thereby we deprive him of the dignity that may be
his. Satan’s sin was, in its essence, sin against the Holy Ghost,
for which there can be no “_Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do_” (_Luke 23:34_), since it was choosing evil with
the _mala gaudia mentis_, or the clearest intuition that it was
evil. If there be no devil, then man himself is devil. It has been
said of Voltaire, that without believing in a devil, he saw him
everywhere—even where he was not. Christian, in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress, takes comfort when he finds that the blasphemous
suggestions which came to him in the dark valley were suggestions
from the fiend that pursued him. If all temptation is from within,
our case would seem hopeless. But if “_an enemy hath done this_”
(_Mat. 13:28_), then there is hope. And so we may accept the
maxim: “Nullus diabolus, nullus Redemptor.” Unitarians have no
Captain of their Salvation, and so have no Adversary against whom
to contend. See Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 17; Birks,
Difficulties of Belief, 78-100; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:291-293. Many
of the objections and answers mentioned above have been taken from
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:251-284, where a fuller statement of
them may be found.

III. Practical uses of the Doctrine of Angels.

A. Uses of the doctrine of good angels.

(_a_) It gives us a new sense of the greatness of the divine resources,
and of God’s grace in our creation, to think of the multitude of unfallen
intelligences who executed the divine purposes before man appeared.

(_b_) It strengthens our faith in God’s providential care, to know that
spirits of so high rank are deputed to minister to creatures who are
environed with temptations and are conscious of sin.

(_c_) It teaches us humility, that beings of so much greater knowledge and
power than ours should gladly perform these unnoticed services, in behalf
of those whose only claim upon them is that they are children of the same
common Father.

(_d_) It helps us in the struggle against sin, to learn that these
messengers of God are near, to mark our wrong doing if we fall, and to
sustain us if we resist temptation.

(_e_) It enlarges our conceptions of the dignity of our own being, and of
the boundless possibilities of our future existence, to remember these
forms of typical innocence and love, that praise and serve God unceasingly
in heaven.

Instance the appearance of angels in Jacob’s life at Bethel (_Gen.
28:12_—Jacob’s conversion?) and at Mahanaim (_Gen. 32:1, 2_—two
camps, of angels, on the right hand and on the left; _cf._ _Ps.
34:7_—“_The angel of Jehovah encampeth round about them that fear
him, And delivereth them_”); so too the Angel at Penuel that
struggled with Jacob at his entering the promised land (_Gen.
32:24_; _cf._ _Hos. 12:3, 4_—“_in his manhood he had power with
God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed_”), and “_the
angel who hath redeemed me from all evil_” (_Gen. 48:16_) to whom
Jacob refers on his dying bed. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:
“And is there care in heaven? and is there love In heavenly
spirits to these creatures base That may compassion of their evils
move? There is; else much more wretched were the case Of men than
beasts. But O, th’ exceeding grace Of highest God that loves his
creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That
blessed angels he sends to and fro To serve to wicked man, to
serve his wicked foe! How oft do they their silver bowers leave
And come to succor us who succor want! How oft do they with golden
pinions cleave The flitting skies like flying pursuivant, Against
foul fiends to aid us militant! They for us fight; they watch and
duly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant; And
all for love, and nothing for reward. Oh, why should heavenly God
for men have such regard!”

It shows us that sin is not mere finiteness, to see these finite
intelligences that maintained their integrity. Shakespeare, Henry
VIII, 2:2—“He counsels a divorce—a loss of her That, like a jewel,
has hung twenty years About his neck, yet never lost her lustre;
Of her that loves him with that excellence That angels love good
men with; even of her That, when the greatest stroke of fortune
falls, Will bless the king.” Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Man, proud
man, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As makes the
angels weep.”

B. Uses of the doctrine of evil angels.

(_a_) It illustrates the real nature of sin, and the depth of the ruin to
which it may bring the soul, to reflect upon the present moral condition
and eternal wretchedness to which these spirits, so highly endowed, have
brought themselves by their rebellion against God.

(_b_) It inspires a salutary fear and hatred of the first subtle
approaches of evil from within or from without, to remember that these may
be the covert advances of a personal and malignant being, who seeks to
overcome our virtue and to involve us in his own apostasy and destruction.

(_c_) It shuts us up to Christ, as the only Being who is able to deliver
us or others from the enemy of all good.

(_d_) It teaches us that our salvation is wholly of grace, since for such
multitudes of rebellious spirits no atonement and no renewal were
provided—simple justice having its way, with no mercy to interpose or
save.

Philippi, in his Glaubenslehre, 3:151-284, suggests the following
relations of the doctrine of Satan to the doctrine of sin: 1.
Since Satan is a fallen _angel_, who once was pure, evil is not
self-existent or necessary. Sin does not belong to the substance
which God created, but is a later addition. 2. Since Satan is a
purely _spiritual_ creature, sin cannot have its origin in mere
sensuousness, or in the mere possession of a physical nature. 3.
Since Satan is not a _weak_ and _poorly endowed_ creature, sin is
not a necessary result of weakness and limitation. 4. Since Satan
is _confirmed in evil_, sin is not necessarily a transient or
remediable act of will. 5. Since in Satan sin _does not come to an
end_, sin is not a step of creaturely development, or a stage of
progress to something higher and better. On the uses of the
doctrine, see also Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 1:316;
Robert Hall, Works, 3:35-51; Brooks, Satan and his Devices.

“They never sank so low, They are not raised so high; They never
knew such depths of woe, Such heights of majesty. The Savior did
not join Their nature to his own; For them he shed no blood
divine. Nor heaved a single groan.” If no redemption has been
provided for them, it may be because: 1. sin originated with them;
2. the sin which they committed was “_an eternal sin_” (_cf._
_Mark 3:29_); 3. they sinned with clearer intellect and fuller
knowledge than ours (_cf._ _Luke 23:34_); 4. their incorporeal
being aggravated their sin and made it analogous to our sinning
against the Holy Spirit (_cf._ _Mat. 12:31, 32_); 5. this
incorporeal being gave no opportunity for Christ to objectify his
grace and visibly to join himself to them (_cf._ _Heb. 2:16_); 6.
their persistence in evil, in spite of their growing knowledge of
the character of God as exhibited in human history, has resulted
in a hardening of heart which is not susceptible of salvation.

Yet angels were created in Christ (_Col. 1:16_); they consist in
him (_Col. 1:17_); he must suffer in their sin; God would save
them, if he consistently could. Dr. G. W. Samson held that the
Logos became an angel before he became man, and that this explains
his appearances as “_the angel of Jehovah_” in the Old Testament
(_Gen. 22:11_). It is not asserted that _all_ fallen angels shall
be eternally tormented (_Rev. 14:10_). In terms equally strong
(_Mat. 25:41_; _Rev. 20:10_) the existence of a place of eternal
punishment for wicked men is declared, but nevertheless we do not
believe that all men will go there, in spite of the fact that all
men are wicked. The silence of Scripture with regard to a
provision of salvation for fallen angels does not prove that there
is no such provision. _2 Pet. 2:4_ shows that evil angels have not
received _final_ judgment, but are in a temporary state of
existence, and their final state is yet to be revealed. If God has
not already provided, may he not yet provide redemption for them,
and the “_elect angels_” (_1 Tim. 5:21_) be those whom God has
predestinated to stand this future probation and be saved, while
only those who persist in their rebellion will be consigned to the
lake of fire and brimstone (_Rev. 20:10_)?

The keeper of a young tigress patted her head and she licked his
hand. But when she grew older she seized his hand with her teeth
and began to craunch it. He pulled away his hand in shreds. He
learned not to fondle a tigress. Let us learn not to fondle Satan.
Let us not be “_ignorant of his devices_” (_2 Cor. 2:11_). It is
not well to keep loaded firearms in the chimney corner. “They who
fear the adder’s sting will not come near her hissing.” Talmage:
“O Lord, help us to hear the serpent’s rattle before we feel its
fangs.” Ian Maclaren, Cure of Souls, 215—The pastor trembles for a
soul, “when he sees the destroyer hovering over it like a hawk
poised in midair, and would have it gathered beneath Christ’s
wing.”

Thomas K. Beecher: “Suppose I lived on Broadway where the crowd
was surging past in both directions all the time. Would I leave my
doors and windows open, saying to the crowd of strangers: ‘Enter
my door, pass through my hall, come into my parlor, make
yourselves at home in my dining-room, go up into my bedchambers’?
No! I would have my windows and doors barred and locked against
intruders, to be opened only to me and mine and those I would have
as companions. Yet here we see foolish men and women stretching
out their arms and saying to the spirits of the vasty deep: ‘Come
in, and take possession of me. Write with my hands, think with my
brain, speak with my lips, walk with my feet, use me as a medium
for whatever you will.’ God respects the sanctity of man’s spirit.
Even Christ stands at the door and knocks. Holy Spirit, fill me,
so that there shall be room for no other!” (_Rev. 3:20_; _Eph.
5:18_.)

PART V. ANTHROPOLOGY, OR THE DOCTRINE OF MAN.

Chapter I. Preliminary.

I. Man a Creation of God and a Child of God.

The fact of man’s creation is declared in Gen. 1:27—“And God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him”; 2:7—“And Jehovah
God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

(_a_) The Scriptures, on the one hand, negate the idea that man is the
mere product of unreasoning natural forces. They refer his existence to a
cause different from mere nature, namely, the creative act of God.

Compare _Hebrews 12:9_—“_the Father of spirits_”; _Num.
16:22_—“_the God of the spirits of all flesh_”; _27:16_—“_Jehovah,
the God of the spirits of all flesh_”; _Rev. 22:6_—“_the God of
the spirits of the prophets._” Bruce, The Providential Order,
25—“Faith in God may remain intact, though we concede that man in
all his characteristics, physical and psychical, is no exception
to the universal law of growth, no breach in the continuity of the
evolutionary process.” By “_mere_ nature” we mean nature apart
from God. Our previous treatment of the doctrine of creation in
general has shown that the laws of nature are only the regular
methods of God, and that the conception of a nature apart from God
is an irrational one. If the evolution of the lower creation
cannot be explained without taking into account the originating
agency of God, much less can the coming into being of man, the
crown of all created things. Hudson, Divine Pedigree of Man:
“Spirit in man is linked with, because derived from, God, who is
spirit.”

(_b_) But, on the other hand, the Scriptures do not disclose the method of
man’s creation. Whether man’s physical system is or is not derived, by
natural descent, from the lower animals, the record of creation does not
inform us. As the command “Let the earth bring forth living creatures”
(Gen. 1:24) does not exclude the idea of mediate creation, through natural
generation, so the forming of man “of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7)
does not in itself determine whether the creation of man’s body was
mediate or immediate.

We may believe that man sustained to the highest preceding brute
the same relation which the multiplied bread and fish sustained to
the five loaves and two fishes (_Mat. 14:19_), or which the wine
sustained to the water which was transformed at Cana (_John
2:7-10_), or which the multiplied oil sustained to the original
oil in the O. T. miracle (_2 K. 4:1-7_). The “_dust_,” before the
breathing of the spirit into it, may have been animated dust.
Natural means may have been used, so far as they would go.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 39—“Our heredity is
from God, even though it be from lower forms of life, and our goal
is also God, even though it be through imperfect manhood.”

Evolution does not make the idea of a Creator superfluous, because
evolution is only the method of God. It is perfectly consistent
with a Scriptural doctrine of Creation that man should emerge at
the proper time, governed by different laws from the brute
creation yet growing out of the brute, just as the foundation of a
house built of stone is perfectly consistent with the wooden
structure built upon it. All depends upon the plan. An atheistic
and undesigning evolution cannot include man without excluding
what Christianity regards as essential to man; see Griffith-Jones,
Ascent through Christ, 43-73. But a theistic evolution can
recognize the whole process of man’s creation as equally the work
of nature and the work of God.

Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 42—“You are not what you have
come from, but what you have become.” Huxley said of the brutes:
“Whether _from_ them or not, man is assuredly not _of_ them.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:289—“The religious dignity of man
rests after all upon what he _is_, not upon the mode and manner in
which he has _become_ what he is.” Because he came _from_ a beast,
it does not follow that he _is_ a beast. Nor does the fact that
man’s existence can be traced back to a brute ancestry furnish any
proper reason why the brute should become man. Here is a teleology
which requires a divine Creatorship.

J. M. Bronson: “The theist must accept evolution if he would keep
his argument for the existence of God from the unity of design in
nature. Unless man is an _end_, he is an _anomaly_. The greatest
argument for God is the fact that all animate nature is one vast
and connected unity. Man has developed not _from_ the ape, but
_away from_ the ape. He was never anything but potential man. He
did not, as man, come into being until he became a conscious moral
agent.” This conscious moral nature, which we call personality,
requires a divine Author, because it surpasses all the powers
which can be found in the animal creation. Romanes, Mental
Evolution in Animals, tells us that: 1. Mollusca learn by
experience; 2. Insects and spiders recognize offspring; 3. Fishes
make mental association of objects by their similarity; 4.
Reptiles recognize persons; 5. Hymenoptera, as bees and ants,
communicate ideas; 6. Birds recognize pictorial representations
and understand words; 7. Rodents, as rats and foxes, understand
mechanisms; 8. Monkeys and elephants learn to use tools; 9.
Anthropoid apes and dogs have indefinite morality.

But it is definite and not indefinite morality which differences
man from the brute. Drummond, in his Ascent of Man, concedes that
man passed through a period when he resembled the ape more than
any known animal, but at the same time declares that no anthropoid
ape could develop into a man. The brute can be defined in terms of
man, but man cannot be defined in terms of the brute. It is
significant that in insanity the higher endowments of man
disappear in an order precisely the reverse of that in which,
according to the development theory, they have been acquired. The
highest part of man totters first. The last added is first to
suffer. Man moreover can transmit his own acquisitions to his
posterity, as the brute cannot. Weismann, Heredity, 2:69—“The
evolution of music does not depend upon any increase of the
musical faculty or any alteration in the inherent physical nature
of man, but solely upon the power of transmitting the intellectual
achievements of each generation to those which follow. This, more
than anything, is the cause of the superiority of men over
animals—this, and not merely human faculty, although it may be
admitted that this latter is much higher than in animals.” To this
utterance of Weismann we would add that human progress depends
quite as much upon man’s power of reception as upon man’s power of
transmission. Interpretation must equal expression; and, in this
interpretation of the past, man has a guarantee of the future
which the brute does not possess.

(_c_) Psychology, however, comes in to help our interpretation of
Scripture. The radical differences between man’s soul and the principle of
intelligence in the lower animals, especially man’s possession of
self-consciousness, general ideas, the moral sense, and the power of
self-determination, show that that which chiefly constitutes him man could
not have been derived, by any natural process of development, from the
inferior creatures. We are compelled, then, to believe that God’s
“breathing into man’s nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7), though it
was a mediate creation as presupposing existing material in the shape of
animal forms, was yet an immediate creation in the sense that only a
divine reinforcement of the process of life turned the animal into man. In
other words, man came not _from_ the brute, but _through_ the brute, and
the same immanent God who had previously created the brute created also
the man.

Tennyson, In Memoriam, XLV—“The baby new to earth and sky, What
time his tender palm is pressed Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I’: But as he grows he gathers
much, And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’ And finds ‘I am not what
I see, And other than the things I touch.’ So rounds he to a
separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro’ the
frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined.” Fichte
called that the birthday of his child, when the child awoke to
self-consciousness and said “I.” Memory goes back no further than
language. Knowledge of the ego is objective, before it is
subjective. The child at first speaks of himself in the third
person: “Henry did so and so.” Hence most men do not remember what
happened before their third year, though Samuel Miles Hopkins,
Memoir, 20, remembered what must have happened when he was only 23
months old. Only a conscious person remembers, and he remembers
only as his will exerts itself in attention.

Jean Paul Richter, quoted in Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 110—“Never
shall I forget the phenomenon in myself, never till now recited,
when I stood by the birth of my own self-consciousness, the place
and time of which are distinct in my memory. On a certain
forenoon, I stood, a very young child, within the house-door, and
was looking out toward the wood-pile, as in an instant the inner
revelation ‘I am I,’ like lightning from heaven, flashed and stood
brightly before me; in that moment I had seen myself as I, for the
first time and forever.”

Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 3—“The beginning of conscious
life is to be placed probably before birth.... Sensations only
faintly and dimly distinguished from the general feeling of
vegetative comfort and discomfort. Still the experiences undergone
before birth perhaps suffice to form the foundation of the
consciousness of an external world.” Hill, Genetic Philosophy,
282, suggests that this early state, in which the child speaks of
self in the third person and is devoid of _self_-consciousness,
corresponds to the brute condition of the race, before it had
reached self-consciousness, attained language, and become man. In
the race, however, there was no heredity to predetermine
self-consciousness—it was a new acquisition, marking transition to
a superior order of being.

Connecting these remarks with our present subject, we assert that
no brute ever yet said, or thought, “I.” With this, then, we may
begin a series of simple distinctions between man and the brute,
so far as the immaterial principle in each is concerned. These are
mainly compiled from writers hereafter mentioned.

1. The brute is conscious, but man is self-conscious. The brute
does not objectify self. “If the pig could once say, ‘I am a pig,’
it would at once and thereby cease to be a pig.” The brute does
not distinguish itself from its sensations. The brute has
perception, but only the man has apperception, _i. e._, perception
accompanied by reference of it to the self to which it belongs.

2. The brute has only percepts; man has also concepts. The brute
knows white things, but not whiteness. It remembers things, but
not thoughts. Man alone has the power of abstraction, _i. e._, the
power of deriving abstract ideas from particular things or
experiences.

3. Hence the brute has no language. “Language is the expression of
general notions by symbols” (Harris). Words are the symbols of
concepts. Where there are no concepts there can be no words. The
parrot utters cries; but “no parrot ever yet spoke a true word.”
Since language is a sign, it presupposes the existence of an
intellect capable of understanding the sign,—in short, language is
the effect of mind, not the cause of mind. See Mivart, in Brit.
Quar., Oct. 1881:154-172. “The ape’s tongue is eloquent in his own
dispraise.” James, Psychology, 2:356—“The notion of a sign as
such, and the general purpose to apply it to everything, is the
distinctive characteristic of man.” Why do not animals speak?
Because they have nothing to say, _i. e._, have no general ideas
which words might express.

4. The brute forms no judgments, _e. g._, that _this_ is like
_that_, accompanied with belief. Hence there is no sense of the
ridiculous, and no laughter. James, Psychology, 2:360—“The brute
does not associate ideas by similarity.... Genius in man is the
possession of this power of association in an extreme degree.”

5. The brute has no reasoning—no sense that _this_ follows from
_that_, accompanied by a feeling that the sequence is necessary.
Association of ideas without judgment is the typical process of
the brute mind, though not that of the mind of man. See Mind,
5:402-409, 575-581. Man’s dream-life is the best analogue to the
mental life of the brute.

6. The brute has no general ideas or intuitions, as of space,
time, substance, cause, right. Hence there is no generalizing, and
no proper experience or progress. There is no capacity for
improvement in animals. The brute cannot be trained, except in
certain inferior matters of association, where independent
judgment is not required. No animal makes tools, uses clothes,
cooks food, breeds other animals for food. No hunter’s dog,
however long its observation of its master, ever learned to put
wood on a fire to keep itself from freezing. Even the rudest stone
implements show a break in continuity and mark the introduction of
man; see J. P. Cook, Credentials of Science, 14. “The dog can see
the printed page as well as a man can, but no dog was ever taught
to read a book. The animal cannot create in its own mind the
thoughts of the writer. The physical in man, on the contrary, is
only an aid to the spiritual. Education is a trained capacity to
discern the inner meaning and deeper relations of things. So the
universe is but a symbol and expression of spirit, a garment in
which an invisible Power has robed his majesty and glory”; see S.
S. Times, April 7, 1900. In man, mind first became supreme.

7. The brute has determination, but not self-determination. There
is no freedom of choice, no conscious forming of a purpose, and no
self-movement toward a predetermined end. The donkey is
determined, but not self-determined; he is the victim of heredity
and environment; he acts only as he is acted upon. Harris, Philos.
Basis of Theism, 537-554—“Man, though implicated in nature through
his bodily organization, is in his personality supernatural; the
brute is wholly submerged in nature.... Man is like a ship in the
sea—in it, yet above it—guiding his course, by observing the
heavens, even against wind and current. A brute has no such power;
it is in nature like a balloon, wholly immersed in air, and driven
about by its currents, with no power of steering.” Calderwood,
Philosophy of Evolution, chapter on Right and Wrong: “The grand
distinction of human life is self-control in the field of
action—control over all the animal impulses, so that these do not
spontaneously and of themselves determine activity” [as they do in
the brute]. By what Mivart calls a process of “inverse
anthropomorphism,” we clothe the brute with the attributes of
freedom; but it does not really possess them. Just as we do not
transfer to God all our human imperfections, so we ought not to
transfer all our human perfections to the brute, “reading our full
selves in life of lower forms.” The brute has no power to choose
between motives; it simply obeys motive. The necessitarian
philosophy, therefore, is a correct and excellent philosophy for
the brute. But man’s power of initiative—in short, man’s free
will—renders it impossible to explain his higher nature as a mere
natural development from the inferior creatures. Even Huxley has
said that, taking mind into the account, there is between man and
the highest beasts an “enormous gulf,” a “divergence immeasurable”
and “practically infinite.”

8. The brute has no conscience and no religious nature. No dog
ever brought back to the butcher the meat it had stolen. “The
aspen trembles without fear, and dogs skulk without guilt.” The
dog mentioned by Darwin, whose behavior in presence of a newspaper
moved by the wind seemed to testify to “a sense of the
supernatural,” was merely exhibiting the irritation due to the
sense of an unknown future; see James, Will to Believe, 79. The
bearing of flogged curs does not throw light upon the nature of
conscience. If ethics is not hedonism, if moral obligation is not
a refined utilitarianism, if the right is something distinct from
the good we get out of it, then there must be a flaw in the theory
that man’s conscience is simply a development of brute instincts;
and a reinforcement of brute life from the divine source of life
must be postulated in order to account for the appearance of man.
Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 165-167—“Is the spirit of man derived
from the soul of the animal? No, for neither one of these has
self-existence. Both are self-differentiations of God. The latter
is simply God’s preparation for the former.” Calderwood, Evolution
and Man’s Place in Nature, 337, speaks of “the impossibility of
tracing the origin of man’s rational life to evolution from a
lower life.... There are no physical forces discoverable in nature
sufficient to account for the appearance of this life.” Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 186—“Man’s place has been won by an
entire change in the limitations of his psychic development....
The old bondage of the mind to the body is swept away.... In this
new freedom we find the one dominant characteristic of man, the
feature which entitles us to class him as an entirely new class of
animal.”

John Burroughs, Ways of Nature: “Animal life parallels human life
at many points, but it is in another plane. Something guides the
lower animals, but it is not thought; something restrains them,
but it is not judgment; they are provident without prudence; they
are active without industry; they are skilful without practice;
they are wise without knowledge; they are rational without reason;
they are deceptive without guile.... When they are joyful, they
sing or they play; when they are distressed, they moan or they
cry; ... and yet I do not suppose they experience the emotion of
joy or sorrow, or anger or love, as we do, because these feelings
in them do not involve reflection, memory, and what we call the
higher nature, as with us. Their instinct is intelligence directed
outward, never inward, as in man. They share with man the emotions
of his animal nature, but not of his moral or æsthetic nature;
they know no altruism, no moral code.” Mr. Burroughs maintains
that we have no proof that animals in a state of nature can
reflect, form abstract ideas, associate cause and effect. Animals,
for instance, that store up food for the winter simply follow a
provident instinct but do not take thought for the future, any
more than does the tree that forms new buds for the coming season.
He sums up his position as follows: “To attribute human motives
and faculties to the animals is to caricature them; but to put us
in such relation to them that we feel their kinship, that we see
their lives embosomed in the same iron necessity as our own, that
we see in their minds a humbler manifestation of the same psychic
power and intelligence that culminates and is conscious of itself
in man—that, I take it, is the true humanization.” We assent to
all this except the ascription to human life of the same iron
necessity that rules the animal creation. Man is man, because his
free will transcends the limitations of the brute.

While we grant, then, that man is the last stage in the
development of life and that he has a brute ancestry, we regard
him also as the offspring of God. The same God who was the author
of the brute became in due time the creator of man. Though man
came _through_ the brute, he did not come _from_ the brute, but
from God, the Father of spirits and the author of all life.
Œdipus’ terrific oracle: “Mayst thou ne’er know the truth of what
thou art!” might well be uttered to those who believe only in the
brute origin of man. Pascal says it is dangerous to let man see
too clearly that he is on a level with the animals unless at the
same time we show him his greatness. The doctrine that the brute
is imperfect man is logically connected with the doctrine that man
is a perfect brute. Thomas Carlyle: “If this brute philosophy is
true, then man should go on all fours, and not lay claim to the
dignity of being moral.” G. F. Wright, Ant. and Origin of Human
Race, lecture IX—“One or other of the lower animals may exhibit
all the faculties used by a child of fifteen months. The
difference may seem very little, but what there is is very
important. It is like the difference in direction in the early
stages of two separating curves, which go on forever diverging....
The probability is that both in his bodily and in his mental
development man appeared as a _sport_ in nature, and leaped at
once in some single pair from the plane of irrational being to the
possession of the higher powers that have ever since characterized
him and dominated both his development and his history.”

Scripture seems to teach the doctrine that man’s nature is the
creation of God. _Gen. 2:7_—“_Jehovah God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul_”—appears, says Hovey (State of the
Impen. Dead, 14), “to distinguish the vital informing principle of
human nature from its material part, pronouncing the former to be
more directly from God, and more akin to him, than the latter.” So
in _Zech. 12:1_—“_Jehovah, who stretcheth forth the heavens, and
layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man
within him_”—the soul is recognized as distinct in nature from the
body, and of a dignity and value far beyond those of any material
organism. _Job 32:8_—“_there is a spirit in man, and the breath of
the Almighty giveth them understanding_”; _Eccl. 12:7_—“_the dust
returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto
God who gave it._” A sober view of the similarities and
differences between man and the lower animals may be found in
Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence. See also Martineau,
Types, 2:65, 140, and Study, 1:180; 2:9, 13, 184, 350; Hopkins,
Outline Study of Man, 8:23; Chadbourne, Instinct, 187-211; Porter,
Hum. Intellect, 384, 386, 397; Bascom, Science of Mind, 295-305;
Mansel, Metaphysics, 49, 50; Princeton Rev., Jan. 1881:104-128;
Henslow, in Nature, May 1, 1879:21, 22; Ferrier, Remains, 2:39;
Argyll, Unity of Nature, 117-119; Bib. Sac., 29:275-282; Max
Müller, Lectures on Philos. of Language, no. 1, 2, 3; F. W.
Robertson, Lectures on Genesis, 21; Le Conte, in Princeton Rev.,
May, 1884:238-261; Lindsay, Mind in Lower Animals; Romanes, Mental
Evolution in Animals; Fiske, The Destiny of Man.

(_d_) Comparative physiology, moreover, has, up to the present time, done
nothing to forbid the extension of this doctrine to man’s body. No single
instance has yet been adduced of the transformation of one animal species
into another, either by natural or artificial selection; much less has it
been demonstrated that the body of the brute has ever been developed into
that of man. All evolution implies progress and reinforcement of life, and
is unintelligible except as the immanent God gives new impulses to the
process. Apart from the direct agency of God, the view that man’s physical
system is descended by natural generation from some ancestral simian form
can be regarded only as an irrational hypothesis. Since the soul, then, is
an immediate creation of God, and the forming of man’s body is mentioned
by the Scripture writer in direct connection with this creation of the
spirit, man’s body was in this sense an immediate creation also.

For the theory of natural selection, see Darwin, Origin of
Species, 398-424, and Descent of Man, 2:368-387; Huxley, Critiques
and Addresses, 241-269, Man’s Place in Nature, 71-138, Lay
Sermons, 323, and art.: Biology, in Encyc. Britannica, 9th ed.;
Romanes, Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution. The theory
holds that, in the struggle for existence, the varieties best
adapted to their surroundings succeed in maintaining and
reproducing themselves, while the rest die out. Thus, by gradual
change and improvement of lower into higher forms of life, man has
been evolved. We grant that Darwin has disclosed one of the
important features of God’s method. We concede the partial truth
of his theory. We find it supported by the vertebrate structure
and nervous organization which man has in common with the lower
animals; by the facts of embryonic development; of rudimentary
organs; of common diseases and remedies; and of reversion to
former types. But we refuse to regard natural selection as a
complete explanation of the history of life, and that for the
following reasons:

1. It gives no account of the origin of substance, nor of the
origin of variations. Darwinism simply says that “round stones
will roll down hill further than flat ones” (Gray, Natural Science
and Religion). It accounts for the selection, not for the
creation, of forms. “Natural selection originates nothing. It is a
destructive, not a creative, principle. If we must idealize it as
a positive force, we must think of it, not as the preserver of the
fittest, but as the destroyer, that follows ever in the wake of
creation and devours the failures; the scavenger of creation, that
takes out of the way forms which are not fit to live and reproduce
themselves” (Johnson, on Theistic Evolution, in Andover Review,
April, 1884:363-381). Natural selection is only unintelligent
repression. Darwin’s Origin of Species is in fact “not the
Genesis, but the Exodus, of living forms.” Schurman: “The
_survival_ of the fittest does nothing to explain the _arrival_ of
the fittest”; see also DeVries, Species and Varieties, _ad finem_.
Darwin himself acknowledged that “Our ignorance of the laws of
variation is profound.... The cause of each slight variation and
of each monstrosity lies much more in the nature or constitution
of the organism than in the nature of the surrounding conditions”
(quoted by Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 280-301). Weismann has
therefore modified the Darwinian theory by asserting that there
would be no development unless there were a spontaneous, innate
tendency to variation. In this innate tendency we see, not mere
nature, but the work of an originating and superintending God. E.
M. Caillard, in Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1893:873-881—“Spirit was the
moulding power, from the beginning, of those lower forms which
would ultimately become man. Instead of the physical derivation of
the soul, we propose the spiritual derivation of the body.”

2. Some of the most important forms appear suddenly in the
geological record, without connecting links to unite them with the
past. The first fishes are the Ganoid, large in size and advanced
in type. There are no intermediate gradations between the ape and
man. Huxley, in Man’s Place in Nature, 94, tells us that the
lowest gorilla has a skull capacity of 24 cubic inches, whereas
the highest gorilla has 34-½. Over against this, the lowest man
has a skull capacity of 62; though men with less than 65 are
invariably idiotic; the highest man has 114. Professor Burt G.
Wilder of Cornell University: “The largest ape-brain is only half
as large as the smallest normal human.” Wallace, Darwinism,
458—“The average human brain weighs 48 or 49 ounces; the average
ape’s brain is only 18 ounces.” The brain of Daniel Webster
weighed 53 ounces; but Dr. Bastian tells of an imbecile whose
intellectual deficiency was congenital, yet whose brain weighed 55
ounces. Large heads do not always indicate great intellect.
Professor Virchow points out that the Greeks, one of the most
intellectual of nations, are also one of the smallest-headed of
all. Bain: “While the size of the brain increases in arithmetical
proportion, intellectual range increases in geometrical
proportion.”

Respecting the Enghis and Neanderthal crania, Huxley says: “The
fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to
take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form by the
modification of which he has probably become what he is.... In
vain have the links which should bind man to the monkey been
sought: not a single one is there to show. The so-called
_Protanthropos_ who should exhibit this link has not been
found.... None have been found that stood nearer the monkey than
the men of to-day.” Huxley argues that the difference between man
and the gorilla is smaller than that between the gorilla and some
apes; if the gorilla and the apes constitute one family and have a
common origin, may not man and the gorilla have a common ancestry
also? We reply that the space between the lowest ape and the
highest gorilla is filled in with numberless intermediate
gradations. The space between the lowest man and the highest man
is also filled in with many types that shade off one into the
other. But the space between the highest gorilla and the lowest
man is absolutely vacant; there are no intermediate types; no
connecting links between the ape and man have yet been found.

Professor Virchow has also very recently expressed his belief that
no relics of any predecessor of man have yet been discovered. He
said: “In my judgment, no skull hitherto discovered can be
regarded as that of a predecessor of man. In the course of the
last fifteen years we have had opportunities of examining skulls
of all the various races of mankind—even of the most savage
tribes; and among them all no group has been observed differing in
its essential characters from the general human type.... Out of
all the skulls found in the lake-dwellings there is not one that
lies outside the boundaries of our present population.” Dr. Eugene
Dubois has discovered in the Post-pliocene deposits of the island
of Java the remains of a preeminently hominine anthropoid which he
calls _Pithecanthropus erectus_. Its cranial capacity approaches
the physiological minimum in man, and is double that of the
gorilla. The thigh bone is in form and dimensions the absolute
analogue of that of man, and gives evidence of having supported a
habitually erect body. Dr. Dubois unhesitatingly places this
extinct Javan ape as the intermediate form between man and the
true anthropoid apes. Haeckel (in The Nation, Sept. 15, 1898) and
Keane (in Man Past and Present, 3), regard the _Pithecanthropus_
as a “missing link.” But “Nature” regards it as the remains of a
human microcephalous idiot. In addition to all this, it deserves
to be noticed that man does not degenerate as we travel back in
time. “The Enghis skull, the contemporary of the mammoth and the
cave-bear, is as large as the average of to-day, and might have
belonged to a philosopher.” The monkey nearest to man in physical
form is no more intelligent than the elephant or the bee.

3. There are certain facts which mere heredity cannot explain,
such for example as the origin of the working-bee from the queen
and the drone, neither of which produces honey. The working-bee,
moreover, does not transmit the honey-making instinct to its
posterity; for it is sterile and childless. If man had descended
from the conscienceless brute, we should expect him, when
degraded, to revert to his primitive type. On the contrary, he
does not revert to the brute, but dies out instead. The theory can
give no explanation of beauty in the lowest forms of life, such as
molluscs and diatoms. Darwin grants that this beauty must be of
use to its possessor, in order to be consistent with its
origination through natural selection. But no such use has yet
been shown; for the creatures which possess the beauty often live
in the dark, or have no eyes to see. So, too, the large brain of
the savage is beyond his needs, and is inconsistent with the
principle of natural selection which teaches that no organ can
permanently attain a size unrequired by its needs and its
environment. See Wallace, Natural Selection, 338-360. G. F.
Wright, Man and the Glacial Epoch, 242-301—“That man’s bodily
organization is in some way a development from some extinct member
of the animal kingdom allied to the anthropoid apes is scarcely
any longer susceptible of doubt.... But he is certainly not
descended from any _existing_ species of anthropoid apes.... When
once _mind_ became supreme, the bodily adjustment must have been
rapid, if indeed it is not necessary to suppose that the bodily
preparation for the highest mental faculties was instantaneous, or
by what is called in nature a _sport_.” With this statement of Dr.
Wright we substantially agree, and therefore differ from Shedd
when he says that there is just as much reason for supposing that
monkeys are degenerate men, as that men are improved monkeys.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, 1:1:249, seems to have hinted the
view of Dr. Shedd: “The strain of man’s bred out into baboon and
monkey.” Bishop Wilberforce asked Huxley whether he was related to
an ape on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side. Huxley replied
that he should prefer such a relationship to having for an
ancestor a man who used his position as a minister of religion to
ridicule truth which he did not comprehend. “Mamma, am I descended
from a monkey?” “I do not know, William, I never met any of your
father’s people.”

4. No species is yet known to have been produced either by
artificial or by natural selection. Huxley, Lay Sermons, 323—“It
is not absolutely proven that a group of animals having all the
characters exhibited by species in nature has ever been originated
by selection, whether artificial or natural”; Man’s Place in
Nature, 107—“Our acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis must be
provisional, so long as one link in the chain of evidence is
wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants certainly
produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile
with one another, that link will be wanting.” Huxley has more
recently declared that the missing proof has been found in the
descent of the modern horse with one toe, from Hipparion with two
toes, Anchitherium with three, and Orohippus with four. Even if
this were demonstrated, we should still maintain that the only
proper analogue was to be found in that artificial selection by
which man produces new varieties, and that natural selection can
bring about no useful results and show no progress, unless it be
the method and revelation of a wise and designing mind. In other
words, selection implies intelligence and will, and therefore
cannot be exclusively natural. Mivart, Man and Apes, 192—“If it is
inconceivable and impossible for man’s body to be developed or to
exist without his informing soul, we conclude that, as no natural
process accounts for the different kind of soul—one capable of
articulately expressing general conceptions,—so no merely natural
process can account for the origin of the body informed by it—a
body to which such an intellectual faculty was so essentially and
intimately related.” Thus Mivart, who once considered that
evolution could account for man’s body, now holds instead that it
can account neither for man’s body nor for his soul, and calls
natural selection “a puerile hypothesis” (Lessons from Nature,
300; Essays and Criticisms, 2:289-314).

(_e_) While we concede, then, that man has a brute ancestry, we make two
claims by way of qualification and explanation: first, that the laws of
organic development which have been followed in man’s origin are only the
methods of God and proofs of his creatorship; secondly, that man, when he
appears upon the scene, is no longer brute, but a self-conscious and
self-determining being, made in the image of his Creator and capable of
free moral decision between good and evil.

Both man’s original creation and his new creation in regeneration
are creations from within, rather than from without. In both
cases, God builds the new upon the basis of the old. Man is not a
product of blind forces, but is rather an emanation from that same
divine life of which the brute was a lower manifestation. The fact
that God used preëxisting material does not prevent his authorship
of the result. The wine in the miracle was not water because water
had been used in the making of it, nor is man a brute because the
brute has made some contributions to his creation. Professor John
H. Strong: “Some who freely allow the presence and power of God in
the age-long process seem nevertheless not clearly to see that, in
the final result of finished man, God successfully revealed
himself. God’s work was never really or fully done; man was a
compound of brute and man; and a compound of two such elements
could not be said to possess the qualities of either. God did not
really succeed in bringing moral personality to birth. The
evolution was incomplete; man is still on all fours; he cannot
sin, because he was begotten of the brute; no fall, and no
regeneration, is conceivable. We assert, on the contrary, that,
though man came _through_ the brute, he did not come _from_ the
brute. He came from God, whose immanent life he reveals, whose
image he reflects in a finished moral personality. Because God
succeeded, a fall was possible. We can believe in the age-long
creation of evolution, provided only that this evolution completed
itself. With that proviso, sin remains and the fall.” See also A.
H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-180.

An atheistic and unteleological evolution is a reversion to the
savage view of animals as brethren, and to the heathen idea of a
sphynx-man growing out of the brute. Darwin himself did not deny
God’s authorship. He closes his first great book with the
declaration that life, with all its potencies, was originally
breathed “by the Creator” into the first forms of organic being.
And in his letters he refers with evident satisfaction to Charles
Kingsley’s finding nothing in the theory which was inconsistent
with an earnest Christian faith. It was not Darwin, but disciples
like Haeckel, who put forward the theory as making the hypothesis
of a Creator superfluous. We grant the principle of evolution, but
we regard it as only the method of the divine intelligence, and
must moreover consider it as preceded by an original creative act,
introducing vegetable and animal life, and as supplemented by
other creative acts, at the introduction of man and at the
incarnation of Christ. Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism,
33—“What seemed to wreck our faith in human nature [its origin
from the brute] has been its grandest confirmation. For nothing
argues the essential dignity of man more clearly than his triumph
over the limitations of his brute inheritance, while the long way
that he has come is prophecy of the moral heights undreamed of
that await his tireless feet.” All this is true if we regard human
nature, not as an undesigned result of atheistic evolution, but as
the efflux and reflection of the divine personality. R. E.
Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 29, 1906—“The greatest fact in
heredity is our descent from God, and the greatest fact in
environment is his presence in human life at every point.”

The atheistic conception of evolution is well satirized in the
verse: “There was an ape in days that were earlier; Centuries
passed and his hair became curlier; Centuries more and his thumb
gave a twist, And he was a man and a Positivist.” That this
conception is not a necessary conclusion of modern science, is
clear from the statements of Wallace, the author with Darwin of
the theory of natural selection. Wallace believes that man’s body
was developed from the brute, but he thinks there have been three
breaks in continuity: 1. the appearance of life; 2. the appearance
of sensation and consciousness; and 3. the appearance of spirit.
These seem to correspond to 1. vegetable; 2. animal; and 3. human
life. He thinks natural selection may account for man’s place _in_
nature, but not for man’s place _above_ nature, as a spiritual
being. See Wallace, Darwinism, 445-478—“I fully accept Mr.
Darwin’s conclusion as to the essential identity of man’s bodily
structure with that of the higher mammalia, and his descent from
some ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes.” But
the conclusion that man’s higher faculties have also been derived
from the lower animals “appears to me not to be supported by
adequate evidence, and to be directly opposed to many
well-ascertained facts” (461).... The mathematical, the artistic
and musical faculties, are results, not causes, of
advancement,—they do not help in the struggle for existence and
could not have been developed by natural selection. The
introduction of life (vegetable), of consciousness (animal), of
higher faculty (human), point clearly to a world of spirit, to
which the world of matter is subordinate (474-476).... Man’s
intellectual and moral faculties could not have been developed
from the animal, but must have had another origin; and for this
origin we can find an adequate cause only in the world of spirit.

Wallace, Natural Selection, 338—“The average cranial capacity of
the lowest savage is probably not less than five-sixths of that of
the highest civilized races, while the brain of the anthropoid
apes scarcely amounts to one-third of that of man, in both cases
taking the average; or the proportions may be represented by the
following figures: anthropoid apes, 10; savages, 26; civilized
man, 32.” _Ibid._, 360—“The inference I would draw from this class
of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the
development of man in a definite direction and for a special
purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and
vegetable forms.... The controlling action of a higher
intelligence is a necessary part of the laws of nature, just as
the action of all surrounding organisms is one of the agencies in
organic development,—else the laws which govern the material
universe are insufficient for the production of man.” Sir Wm.
Thompson: “That man could be evolved out of inferior animals is
the wildest dream of materialism, a pure assumption which offends
me alike by its folly and by its arrogance.” Hartmann, in his
Anthropoid Apes, 302-306, while not despairing of “the possibility
of discovering the true link between the world of man and
mammals,” declares that “that purely hypothetical being, the
common ancestor of man and apes, is still to be found,” and that
“man cannot have descended from any of the fossil species which
have hitherto come to our notice, nor yet from any of the species
of apes now extant.” See Dana, Amer. Journ. Science and Arts,
1876:251, and Geology, 603, 604; Lotze, Mikrokosmos, vol. I, bk.
3, chap. 1; Mivart, Genesis of Species, 202-222, 259-307, Man and
Apes, 88, 149-192, Lessons from Nature, 128-242, 280-301, The Cat.
and Encyclop. Britannica, art.: Apes; Quatrefages, Natural History
of Man, 64-87; Bp. Temple, Bampton Lect., 1884:161-189; Dawson,
Story of the Earth and Man, 321-329; Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man,
38-75; Asa Gray, Natural Science and Religion; Schmid, Theories of
Darwin, 115-140; Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 59; McIlvaine,
Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 55-86; Bible Commentary, 1:43;
Martensen, Dogmatics, 136; LeConte, in Princeton Rev., Nov.
1878:776-803; Zöckler, Urgeschichte, 81-105; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:499-515. Also, see this Compendium, pages 392, 393.

(_f_) The truth that man is the offspring of God implies the correlative
truth of a common divine Fatherhood. God is Father of all men, in that he
originates and sustains them as personal beings like in nature to himself.
Even toward sinners God holds this natural relation of Father. It is his
fatherly love, indeed, which provides the atonement. Thus the demands of
holiness are met and the prodigal is restored to the privileges of sonship
which have been forfeited by transgression. This natural Fatherhood,
therefore, does not exclude, but prepares the way for, God’s special
Fatherhood toward those who have been regenerated by his Spirit and who
have believed on his Son; indeed, since all God’s creations take place in
and through Christ, there is a natural and physical sonship of all men, by
virtue of their relation to Christ, the eternal Son, which antedates and
prepares the way for the spiritual sonship of those who join themselves to
him by faith. Man’s natural sonship underlies the history of the fall, and
qualifies the doctrine of Sin.

Texts referring to God’s natural and common Fatherhood are: _Mal.
2:10_—“_Have we not all one father_ [Abraham]? _hath not one God
created us?_” _Luke 3:38_—“_Adam, the son of God_”; _15:11-32_—the
parable of the prodigal son, in which the father is father even
before the prodigal returns; _John 3:16_—“_God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son_”; _John 15:6_—“_If a man abide
not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they
gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are
burned_”;—these words imply a natural union of all men with
Christ,—otherwise they would teach that those who are spiritually
united to him can perish everlastingly. _Acts 17:28_—“_For we are
also his offspring_”—words addressed by Paul to a heathen
audience; _Col. 1:16, 17_—“_in him were all things created ... and
in him all things consist_”; _Heb. 12:9_—“_the Father of
spirits._” Fatherhood, in this larger sense, implies: 1.
Origination; 2. Impartation of life; 3. Sustentation; 4. Likeness
in faculties and powers; 5. Government; 6. Care; 7. Love. In all
these respects God is the Father of all men, and his fatherly love
is both preserving and atoning. God’s natural fatherhood is
mediated by Christ, through whom all things were made, and in whom
all things, even humanity, consist. We are naturally children of
God, as we were _created_ in Christ; we are spiritually sons of
God, as we have been _created anew_ in Christ Jesus. G. W.
Northrop: “God never _becomes_ Father to any men or class of men;
he only becomes a _reconciled_ and _complacent_ Father to those
who become ethically like him. Men are not sons in the full ideal
sense until they comport themselves as sons of God.” Chapman,
Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 39—“While God is the Father of
all men, all men are not the children of God: in other words, God
always realizes completely the idea of Father to every man; but
the majority of men realize only partially the idea of sonship.”

Texts referring to the special Fatherhood of grace are: _John
1:12, 13_—“_as many as received him, to them gave he the right to
become children of God, even to them that believe on his name; who
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God_”; _Rom. 8:14_—“_for as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, these are sons of God_”; _15_—“_ye received the
spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father_”; _2 Cor.
6:17_—“_Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the
Lord, and touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will
be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty_”; _Eph. 1:5, 6_—“_having foreordained us
unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself_”; _3:14,
15_—“_the Father, from whom every family_ [marg. “fatherhood”] _in
heaven and on earth is named_” (= every race among angels or
men—so Meyer, Romans, 158, 159); _Gal 3:26_—“_for ye are all sons
of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus_”; _4:6_—“_And because ye
are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
crying, Abba, Father_”; _1 John 3:1, 2_—“_Behold what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
children of God; __ and such we are.... Beloved, now are we
children of God._” The sonship of the race is only rudimentary.
The actual realization of sonship is possible only through Christ.
_Gal. 4:1-7_ intimates a universal sonship, but a sonship in which
the child “_differeth nothing from a bondservant though he is lord
of all_,” and needs still to “_receive the adoption of sons_.”
Simon, Reconciliation, 81—“It is one thing to be a father; another
to discharge all the fatherly functions. Human fathers sometimes
fail to behave like fathers for reasons lying solely in
themselves; sometimes because of hindrances in the conduct or
character of their children. No father can normally discharge his
fatherly functions toward children who are unchildlike. So even
the rebellious son is a son, but he does not act like a son.”
Because all men are naturally sons of God, it does not follow that
all men will be saved. Many who are naturally sons of God are not
spiritually sons of God; they are only “_servants_” who “_abide
not in the house forever_” (_John 8:35_). God is their Father, but
they have yet to “_become_” his children (_Mat. 5:45_).

The controversy between those who maintain and those who deny that
God is the Father of all men is a mere logomachy. God is
physically and naturally the Father of all men; he is morally and
spiritually the Father only of those who have been renewed by his
Spirit. All men are sons of God in a lower sense by virtue of
their natural union with Christ; only those are sons of God in the
higher sense who have joined themselves by faith to Christ in a
spiritual union. We can therefore assent to much that is said by
those who deny the universal divine fatherhood, as, for example,
C. M. Mead, in Am. Jour. Theology, July, 1897:577-600, who
maintains that sonship consists in spiritual kinship with God, and
who quotes, in support of this view, _John 8:41-44_—“_If God were
your Father, ye would love me.... Ye are of your father, the
devil_” = the Fatherhood of God is not universal; _Mat. 5:44,
45_—“_Love your enemies ... in order that ye may become sons of
your Father who is in heaven_”; _John 1:12_—“_as many as received
him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to
them that believe on his name._” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit,
103—“That God has created all men does not constitute them his
sons in the evangelical sense of the word. The sonship on which
the N. T. dwells so constantly is based solely on the experience
of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests
either on a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the
universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the
universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case
the teaching belongs to ‘_another gospel_’ (_Gal. 1:7_), the
recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude, but an
‘_anathema_’ (_Gal 1:8._)”

But we can also agree with much that is urged by the opposite
party, as for example, Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:193—“God does
not _become_ the Father, but _is_ the heavenly Father, even of
those who become his sons.... This Fatherhood of God, instead of
the kingship which was the dominant idea of the Jews, Jesus made
the primary doctrine. The relation is ethical, not the Fatherhood
of mere origination, and therefore only those who live aright are
true sons of God.... 209—Mere kingship, or exaltation above the
world, led to Pharisaic legal servitude and external ceremony and
to Alexandrian philosophical speculation. The Fatherhood
apprehended and announced by Jesus was essentially a relation of
love and holiness.” A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 116-120—“There
is something sacred in humanity. But systems of theology once
began with the essential and natural worthlessness of man.... If
there is no Fatherhood, then selfishness is logical. But
Fatherhood carries with it identity of nature between the parent
and the child. Therefore every laborer is of the nature of God,
and he who has the nature of God cannot be treated like the
products of factory and field.... All the children of God are by
nature partakers of the life of God. They are called ‘_children of
wrath_’ (_Eph. 2:3_), or ‘_of perdition_’ (_John 17:12_), only to
indicate that their proper relations and duties have been
violated.... Love for man is dependent on something worthy of
love, and that is found in man’s essential divinity.” We object to
this last statement, as attributing to man at the beginning what
can come to him only through grace. Man was indeed created in
Christ (_Col. 1:16_) and was a son of God by virtue of his union
with Christ (_Luke 3:38_; _John 15:6_). But since man has sinned
and has renounced his sonship, it can be restored and realized. In
a moral and spiritual sense, only through the atoning work of
Christ and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (_Eph.
2:10_—“_created in Christ Jesus for good works_”; _2 Pet
1:4_—“_his precious and exceeding great promises; that through
these ye may become partakers of the divine nature_”).

Many who deny the universal Fatherhood of God refuse to carry
their doctrine to its logical extreme. To be consistent they
should forbid the unconverted to offer the Lord’s Prayer or even
to pray at all. A mother who did not believe God to be the Father
of all actually said: “My children are not converted, and if I
were to teach them the Lord’s Prayer, I must teach them to say:
‘Our father who art in hell’; for they are only children of the
devil.” Papers on the question: Is God the Father of all Men? are
to be found in the Proceedings of the Baptist Congress,
1896:106-136. Among these the essay of F. H. Rowley asserts God’s
universal Fatherhood upon the grounds: 1. Man is created in the
image of God; 2. God’s fatherly treatment of man, especially in
the life of Christ among men; 3. God’s universal claim on man for
his filial love and trust; 4. Only God’s Fatherhood makes
incarnation possible, for this implies oneness of nature between
God and man. To these we may add: 5. The atoning death of Christ
could be efficacious only upon the ground of a common nature in
Christ and in humanity; and 6. The regenerating work of the Holy
Spirit is intelligible only as the restoration of a filial
relation which was native to man, but which his sin had put into
abeyance. For denial that God is Father to any but the regenerate,
see Candlish, Fatherhood of God; Wright, Fatherhood of God. For
advocacy of the universal Fatherhood, see Crawford, Fatherhood of
God; Lidgett, Fatherhood of God.

II. Unity of the Human Race.

(_a_) The Scriptures teach that the whole human race is descended from a
single pair.

_Gen. 1:27, 28_—“_And God created man in his own image, in the
image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And
God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it_”; _2:7_—“_And
Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul_”; _22_—“_and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the
man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man_”; _3:20_—“_And
the man called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of
all living_” = even Eve is traced back to Adam; _9:19_—“_These
three were the sons of Noah; and of these was the whole earth
overspread._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 110—“Logically, it seems
easier to account for the divergence of what was at first one,
than for the union of what was at first heterogeneous.”

(_b_) This truth lies at the foundation of Paul’s doctrine of the organic
unity of mankind in the first transgression, and of the provision of
salvation for the race in Christ.

_Rom. 5:12_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the
world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men,
for that all sinned_”; _19_—“_For as through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the
obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous_”; _1 Cor.
15:21, 22_—“_For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Heb. 2:16_—“_For verily not of
angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham._” One of the most eminent ethnologists and
anthropologists, Prof. D. G. Brinton, said not long before his
death that all scientific research and teaching tended to the
conviction that mankind has descended from one pair.

(_c_) This descent of humanity from a single pair also constitutes the
ground of man’s obligation of natural brotherhood to every member of the
race.

_Acts 17:26_—“_he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all
the face of the earth_”—here the Rev. Vers. omits the word
“_blood_” (“_made of one blood_”—Auth. Vers.). The word to be
supplied is possibly “father,” but more probably “body”; _cf._
_Heb. 2:11_—“_for both he that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified are all of one_ [father or body]: _for which cause he
is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy
name unto my brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I
sing thy praise._”

Winchell, in his Preadamites, has recently revived the theory
broached in 1655 by Peyrerius, that there were men before Adam:
“Adam is descended from a black race—not the black races from
Adam.” Adam is simply “the remotest ancestor to whom the Jews
could trace their lineage.... The derivation of Adam from an older
human stock is essentially the creation of Adam.” Winchell does
not deny the unity of the race, nor the retroactive effect of the
atonement upon those who lived before Adam; he simply denies that
Adam was the first man. 297—He “regards the Adamic stock as
derived from an older and humbler human type,” originally as low
in the scale as the present Australian savages.

Although this theory furnishes a plausible explanation of certain
Biblical facts, such as the marriage of Cain (_Gen. 4:17_), Cain’s
fear that men would slay him (_Gen. 4:14_), and the distinction
between “_the sons of God_” and “_the daughters of men_” (_Gen.
6:1, 2_), it treats the Mosaic narrative as legendary rather than
historical. Shem, Ham, and Japheth, it is intimated, may have
lived hundreds of years apart from one another (409). Upon this
view, Eve could not be “_the mother of all living_” (_Gen. 3:20_),
nor could the transgression of Adam be the cause and beginning of
condemnation to the whole race (_Rom. 5:12, 19_). As to Cain’s
fear of other families who might take vengeance upon him, we must
remember that we do not know how many children were born to Adam
between Cain and Abel, nor what the age of Cain and Abel was, nor
whether Cain feared only those that were then living. As to Cain’s
marriage, we must remember that even if Cain married into another
family, his wife, upon any hypothesis of the unity of the race,
must have been descended from some other original Cain that
married his sister.

See Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Pentateuch, 1:116—“The marriage of
brothers and sisters was inevitable in the case of children of the
first man, in case the human race was actually to descend from a
single pair, and may therefore be justified, in the face of the
Mosaic prohibition of such marriages, on the ground that the sons
and daughters of Adam represented not merely the family but the
genus, and that it was not till after the rise of several families
that the bonds of fraternal and conjugal love became distinct from
one another and assumed fixed and mutually exclusive forms, the
violation of which is sin.” Prof. W. H. Green: “_Gen. 20:12_ shows
that Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister;...the regulations
subsequently ordained in the Mosaic law were not then in force.”
G. H. Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, has shown that marriage
between cousins is harmless where there is difference of
temperament between the parties. Modern palæontology makes it
probable that at the beginning of the race there was greater
differentiation of brothers and sisters in the same family than
obtains in later times. See Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:275. For criticism
of the doctrine that there were men before Adam, see Methodist
Quar. Rev., April, 1881:205-231; Presb. Rev., 1881:440-444.

The Scripture statements are corroborated by considerations drawn from
history and science. Four arguments may be briefly mentioned:

1. The argument from history.

So far as the history of nations and tribes in both hemispheres can be
traced, the evidence points to a common origin and ancestry in central
Asia.

The European nations are acknowledged to have come, in successive
waves of migration, from Asia. Modern ethnologists generally agree
that the Indian races of America are derived from Mongoloid
sources in Eastern Asia, either through Polynesia or by way of the
Aleutian Islands. Bunsen, Philos. of Universal History, 2:112—the
Asiatic origin of all the North American Indians “is as fully
proved as the unity of family among themselves.” Mason, Origins of
Invention, 361—“Before the time of Columbus, the Polynesians made
canoe voyages from Tahiti to Hawaii, a distance of 2300 miles.”
Keane, Man Past and Present, 1-15, 349-440, treats of the American
Aborigines under two primitive types: Longheads from Europe and
Roundheads from Asia. The human race, he claims, originated in
Indomalaysia and spread thence by migration over the globe. The
world was peopled from one center by Pleistocene man. The primary
groups were evolved each in its special habitat, but all sprang
from a Pleiocene precursor 100,000 years ago. W. T. Lopp,
missionary to the Eskimos, at Port Clarence, Alaska, on the
American side of Bering Strait, writes under date of August 31,
1892: “No thaws during the winter, and ice blocked in the Strait.
This has always been doubted by whalers. Eskimos have told them
that they sometimes crossed the Strait on ice, but they have never
believed them. Last February and March our Eskimos had a tobacco
famine. Two parties (five men) went with dogsleds to East Cape, on
the Siberian coast, and traded some beaver, otter and marten skins
for Russian tobacco, and returned safely. It is only during an
occasional winter that they can do this. But every summer they
make several trips in their big wolf-skin boats—forty feet long.
These observations may throw some light upon the origin of the
prehistoric races of America.”

Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:48—“The semi-civilized nations of Java
and Sumatra are found in possession of a civilization which at
first glance shows itself to have been borrowed from Hindu and
Moslem sources.” See also Sir Henry Rawlinson, quoted in Burgess,
Antiquity and Unity of the Race, 156, 157; Smyth, Unity of Human
Races, 223-236; Pickering, Races of Man, Introd., synopsis, and
page 316; Guyot, Earth and Man, 298-334; Quatrefages, Natural
History of Man, and Unité de l’Espèce Humaine; Godron, Unité de
l’Espèce Humaine, 2:412 _sq._ _Per contra_, however, see Prof. A.
H. Sayce: “The evidence is now all tending to show that the
districts in the neighborhood of the Baltic were those from which
the Aryan languages first radiated, and where the race or races
who spoke them originally dwelt. The Aryan invaders of
Northwestern India could only have been a late and distant
offshoot of the primitive stock, speedily absorbed into the
earlier population of the country as they advanced southward; and
to speak of ‘our Indian brethren’ is as absurd and false as to
claim relationship with the negroes of the United States because
they now use an Aryan language.” Scribner, Where Did Life Begin?
has lately adduced arguments to prove that life on the earth
originated at the North Pole, and Prof. Asa Gray favors this view;
see his Darwiniana, 205, and Scientific Papers, 2:152; so also
Warren, Paradise Found; and Wieland, in Am. Journal of Science,
Dec. 1903:401-430. Dr. J. L. Wortman, in Yale Alumni Weekly, Jan.
14, 1903:129—“The appearance of all these primates in North
America was very abrupt at the beginning of the second stage of
the Eocene. And it is a striking coincidence that approximately
the same forms appear in beds of exactly corresponding age in
Europe. Nor does this synchronism stop with the apes. It applies
to nearly all the other types of Eocene mammalia in the Northern
Hemisphere, and to the accompanying flora as well. These facts can
be explained only on the hypothesis that there was a common centre
from which these plants and animals were distributed. Considering
further that the present continental masses were essentially the
same in the Eocene time as now, and that the North Polar region
then enjoyed a subtropical climate, as is abundantly proved by
fossil plants, we are forced to the conclusion that this common
centre of dispersion lay approximately within the Arctic
Circle.... The origin of the human species did not take place on
the Western Hemisphere.”

2. The argument from language.

Comparative philology points to a common origin of all the more important
languages, and furnishes no evidence that the less important are not also
so derived.

On Sanskrit as a connecting link between the Indo-Germanic
languages, see Max Müller, Science of Language, 1:146-165,
326-342, who claims that all languages pass through the three
stages: monosyllabic, agglutinative, inflectional; and that
nothing necessitates the admission of different independent
beginnings for either the material or the formal elements of the
Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech. The changes of
language are often rapid. Latin becomes the Romance languages, and
Saxon and Norman are united into English, in three centuries. The
Chinese may have departed from their primitive abodes while their
language was yet monosyllabic.

G. J. Romanes, Life and Letters, 195—“Children are the
constructors of all _languages_, as distinguished from
_language_.” Instance Helen Keller’s sudden acquisition of
language, uttering publicly a long piece only three weeks after
she first began to imitate the motions of the lips. G. F. Wright,
Man and the Glacial Period, 242-301—“Recent investigations show
that children, when from any cause isolated at an early age, will
often produce at once a language _de novo_. Thus it would appear
by no means improbable that various languages in America, and
perhaps the earliest languages of the world, may have arisen in a
short time where conditions were such that a family of small
children could have maintained existence when for any cause
deprived of parental and other fostering care.... Two or three
thousand years of prehistoric time is perhaps all that would be
required to produce the diversification of languages which appears
at the dawn of history.... The prehistoric stage of Europe ended
less than a thousand years before the Christian Era.” In a people
whose speech has not been fixed by being committed to writing,
baby-talk is a great source of linguistic corruption, and the
changes are exceedingly rapid. Humboldt took down the vocabulary
of a South American tribe, and after fifteen years of absence
found their speech so changed as to seem a different language.

Zöckler, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 8:68 _sq._, denies
the progress from lower methods of speech to higher, and declares
the most highly developed inflectional languages to be the oldest
and most widespread. Inferior languages are a degeneration from a
higher state of culture. In the development of the Indo-Germanic
languages (such as the French and the English), we have instances
of change from more full and luxuriant expression to that which is
monosyllabic or agglutinative. The theory of Max Müller is also
opposed by Pott, Die Verschiedenheiten der menschlichen Rassen,
202, 242. Pott calls attention to the fact that the Australian
languages show unmistakable similarity to the languages of Eastern
and Southern Asia, although the physical characteristics of these
tribes are far different from the Asiatic.

On the old Egyptian language as a connecting link between the
Indo-European and the Semitic tongues, see Bunsen, Egypt’s Place,
1: preface, 10; also see Farrar, Origin of Language, 213. Like the
old Egyptian, the Berber and the Touareg are Semitic in parts of
their vocabulary, while yet they are Aryan in grammar. So the
Tibetan and Burmese stand between the Indo-European languages, on
the one hand, and the monosyllabic languages, as of China, on the
other. A French philologist claims now to have interpreted the
_Yh-King_, the oldest and most unintelligible monumental writing
of the Chinese, by regarding it as a corruption of the old
Assyrian or Accadian cuneiform characters, and as resembling the
syllabaries, vocabularies, and bilingual tablets in the ruined
libraries of Assyria and Babylon; see Terrien de Lacouperie, The
Oldest Book of the Chinese and its Authors, and The Languages of
China before the Chinese, 11, note; he holds to “the
non-indigenousness of the Chinese civilization and its derivation
from the old Chaldæo-Babylonian focus of culture by the medium of
Susiana.” See also Sayce, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1884:934-936;
also, The Monist, Oct. 1906:562-596, on The Ideograms of the
Chinese and the Central American Calendars. The evidence goes to
show that the Chinese came into China from Susiana in the 23d
century before Christ. Initial G wears down in time into a Y
sound. Many words which begin with Y in Chinese are found in
Accadian beginning with G, as Chinese Ye, “night,” is in Accadian
Ge, “night.” The order of development seems to be: 1. picture
writing; 2. syllabic writing; 3. alphabetic writing.

In a similar manner, there is evidence that the Pharaonic
Egyptians were immigrants from another land, namely, Babylonia.
Hommel derives the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians from the pictures
out of which the cuneiform characters developed, and he shows that
the elements of the Egyptian language itself are contained in that
mixed speech of Babylonia which originated in the fusion of
Sumerians and Semites. The Osiris of Egypt is the Asari of the
Sumerians. Burial in brick tombs in the first two Egyptian
dynasties is a survival from Babylonia, as are also the
seal-cylinders impressed on clay. On the relations between Aryan
and Semitic languages, see Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 55-61;
Murray, Origin and Growth of the Psalms, 7; Bib. Sac., 1870:162;
1876:352-380; 1879:674-706. See also Pezzi, Aryan Philology, 125;
Sayce, Principles of Comp. Philology, 132-174; Whitney, art. on
Comp. Philology in Encyc. Britannica, also Life and Growth of
Language, 269, and Study of Language, 307, 308—“Language affords
certain indications of doubtful value, which, taken along with
certain other ethnological considerations, also of questionable
pertinency, furnish ground for suspecting an ultimate
relationship.... That more thorough comprehension of the history
of Semitic speech will enable us to determine this ultimate
relationship, may perhaps be looked for with hope, though it is
not to be expected with confidence.” See also Smyth, Unity of
Human Races, 199-222; Smith’s Bib. Dict., art.: Confusion of
Tongues.

We regard the facts as, on the whole, favoring an opposite
conclusion from that in Hastings’s Bible Dictionary, art.: Flood:
“The diversity of the human race and of language alike makes it
improbable that men were derived from a single pair.” E. G.
Robinson: “The only trustworthy argument for the unity of the race
is derived from comparative philology. If it should be established
that one of the three families of speech was more ancient than the
others, and the source of the others, the argument would be
unanswerable. Coloration of the skin seems to lie back of climatic
influences. We believe in the unity of the race because in this
there are the fewest difficulties. We would not know how else to
interpret Paul in _Romans 5_.” Max Müller has said that the
fountain head of modern philology as of modern freedom and
international law is the change wrought by Christianity,
superseding the narrow national conception of patriotism by the
recognition of all the nations and races as members of one great
human family.

3. The argument from psychology.

The existence, among all families of mankind, of common mental and moral
characteristics, as evinced in common maxims, tendencies and capacities,
in the prevalence of similar traditions, and in the universal
applicability of one philosophy and religion, is most easily explained
upon the theory of a common origin.

Among the widely prevalent traditions may be mentioned the
tradition of the fashioning of the world and man, of a primeval
garden, of an original innocence and happiness, of a tree of
knowledge, of a serpent, of a temptation and fall, of a division
of time into weeks, of a flood, of sacrifice. It is possible, if
not probable, that certain myths, common to many nations, may have
been handed down from a time when the families of the race had not
yet separated. See Zöckler, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie,
8:71-90; Max Müller, Science of Language, 2:444-455; Prichard,
Nat. Hist. of Man, 2:657-714; Smyth, Unity of Human Races,
236-240; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:77-91; Gladstone, Juventus Mundi.

4. The argument from physiology.

A. It is the common judgment of comparative physiologists that man
constitutes but a single species. The differences which exist between the
various families of mankind are to be regarded as varieties of this
species. In proof of these statements we urge: (_a_) The numberless
intermediate gradations which connect the so-called races with each other.
(_b_) The essential identity of all races in cranial, osteological, and
dental characteristics. (_c_) The fertility of unions between individuals
of the most diverse types, and the continuous fertility of the offspring
of such unions.

Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 163—“It may be safely affirmed
that, even if the differences between men are specific, they are
so small that the assumption of more than one primitive stock for
all is altogether superfluous. We may admit that Negroes and
Australians are distinct species, yet be the strictest
monogenists, and even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval
parents of mankind, _i. e._, on Darwin’s hypothesis”; Origin of
Species, 118—“I am one of those who believe that at present there
is no evidence whatever for saying that mankind sprang originally
from more than a single pair; I must say that I cannot see any
good ground whatever, or any tenable evidence, for believing that
there is more than one species of man.” Owen, quoted by Burgess,
Ant. and Unity of Race, 185—“Man forms but one species, and
differences are but indications of varieties. These variations
merge into each other by easy gradations.” Alex. von Humboldt:
“The different races of men are forms of one sole species,—they
are not different species of a genus.”

Quatrefages, in Revue d. deux Mondes, Dec. 1860:814—“If one places
himself exclusively upon the plane of the natural sciences, it is
impossible not to conclude in favor of the monogenist doctrine.”
Wagner, quoted in Bib. Sac., 19:607—“Species—the collective total
of individuals which are capable of producing one with another an
uninterruptedly fertile progeny.” Pickering, Races of Man,
316—“There is no middle ground between the admission of eleven
distinct species in the human family and their reduction to one.
The latter opinion implies a central point of origin.”

There is an impossibility of deciding how many races there are, if
we once allow that there are more than one. While Pickering would
say eleven, Agassiz says eight, Morton twenty-two, and Burke
sixty-five. Modern science all tends to the derivation of each
family from a single germ. Other common characteristics of all
races of men, in addition to those mentioned in the text, are the
duration of pregnancy, the normal temperature of the body, the
mean frequency of the pulse, the liability to the same diseases.
Meehan, State Botanist of Pennsylvania, maintains that hybrid
vegetable products are no more sterile than are ordinary plants
(Independent, Aug. 21, 1884).

E. B. Tylor, art.: Anthropology, in Encyc. Britannica: “On the
whole it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind
now stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages.” Darwin,
Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1:39—“From the resemblance
in several countries of the half-domesticated dogs to the wild
species still living there, from the facility with which they can
be crossed together, from even half tamed animals being so much
valued by savages, and from the other circumstances previously
remarked on which favor domestication, it is highly probable that
the domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good
species of wolf (_viz._, _Canis lupus_ and _Canis latrans_), and
from two or three other doubtful species of wolves (namely, the
European, Indian and North American forms); from at least one or
two South American canine species; from several races or species
of the jackal; and perhaps from one or more extinct species.” Dr.
E. M. Moore tried unsuccessfully to produce offspring by pairing a
Newfoundland dog and a wolf-like dog from Canada. He only proved
anew the repugnance of even slightly separated species toward one
another.

B. Unity of species is presumptive evidence of unity of origin. Oneness of
origin furnishes the simplest explanation of specific uniformity, if
indeed the very conception of species does not imply the repetition and
reproduction of a primordial type-idea impressed at its creation upon an
individual empowered to transmit this type-idea to its successors.

Dana, quoted in Burgess, Antiq. and Unity of Race, 185, 186—“In
the ascending scale of animals, the number of species in any genus
diminishes as we rise, and should by analogy be smallest at the
head of the series. Among mammals, the higher genera have few
species, and the highest group next to man, the orang-outang, has
only eight, and these constitute but two genera. Analogy requires
that man should have preëminence and should constitute only one.”
194—“A species corresponds to a specific amount or condition of
concentrated force defined in the act or law of creation.... The
species in any particular case began its existence when the first
germ-cell or individual was created. When individuals multiply
from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the
primordial type-idea.... The specific is based on a numerical
unity, the species being nothing else than an enlargement of the
individual.” For full statement of Dana’s view, see Bib. Sac., Oct
1857:862-866. On the idea of species, see also Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:63-74.

(_a_) To this view is opposed the theory, propounded by Agassiz, of
different centres of creation, and of different types of humanity
corresponding to the varying fauna and flora of each. But this theory
makes the plural origin of man an exception in creation. Science points
rather to a single origin of each species, whether vegetable or animal. If
man be, as this theory grants, a single species, he should be, by the same
rule, restricted to one continent in his origin. This theory, moreover,
applies an unproved hypothesis with regard to the distribution of
organized beings in general to the very being whose whole nature and
history show conclusively that he is an exception to such a general rule,
if one exists. Since man can adapt himself to all climes and conditions,
the theory of separate centres of creation is, in his case, gratuitous and
unnecessary.

Agassiz’s view was first published in an essay on the Provinces of
the Animal World, in Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, a book
gotten up in the interest of slavery. Agassiz held to eight
distinct centres of creation, and to eight corresponding types of
humanity—the Arctic, the Mongolian, the European, the American,
the Negro, the Hottentot, the Malay, the Australian. Agassiz
regarded Adam as the ancestor only of the white race, yet like
Peyrerius and Winchell be held that man in all his various races
constitutes but one species.

The whole tendency of recent science, however, has been adverse to
the doctrine of separate centres of creation, even in the case of
animal and vegetable life. In temperate North America there are
two hundred and seven species of quadrupeds, of which only eight,
and these polar animals, are found in the north of Europe or Asia.
If North America be an instance of a separate centre of creation
for its peculiar species, why should God create the same species
of man in eight different localities? This would make man an
exception in creation. There is, moreover, no need of creating man
in many separate localities; for, unlike the polar bears and the
Norwegian firs, which cannot live at the equator, man can adapt
himself to the most varied climates and conditions. For replies to
Agassiz, see Bib. Sac., 19:607-632; Princeton Rev., 1862:435-464.

(_b_) It is objected, moreover, that the diversities of size, color, and
physical conformation, among the various families of mankind, are
inconsistent with the theory of a common origin. But we reply that these
diversities are of a superficial character, and can be accounted for by
corresponding diversities of condition and environment. Changes which have
been observed and recorded within historic times show that the differences
alluded to may be the result of slowly accumulated divergences from one
and the same original and ancestral type. The difficulty in the case,
moreover, is greatly relieved when we remember (1) that the period during
which these divergences have arisen is by no means limited to six thousand
years (see note on the antiquity of the race, pages 224-226); and (2)
that, since species in general exhibit their greatest power of divergence
into varieties immediately after their first introduction, all the
varieties of the human species may have presented themselves in man’s
earliest history.

Instances of physiological change as the result of new conditions:
The Irish driven by the English two centuries ago from Armagh and
the south of Down, have become prognathous like the Australians.
The inhabitants of New England have descended from the English,
yet they have already a physical type of their own. The Indians of
North America, or at least certain tribes of them, have
permanently altered the shape of the skull by bandaging the head
in infancy. The Sikhs of India, since the establishment of Bába
Nának’s religion (1500 A. D.) and their consequent advance in
civilization, have changed to a longer head and more regular
features, so that they are now distinguished greatly from their
neighbors, the Afghans, Tibetans, Hindus. The Ostiak savages have
become the Magyar nobility of Hungary. The Turks in Europe are, in
cranial shape, greatly in advance of the Turks in Asia from whom
they descended. The Jews are confessedly of one ancestry; yet we
have among them the light-haired Jews of Poland, the dark Jews of
Spain, and the Ethiopian Jews of the Nile Valley. The Portuguese
who settled in the East Indies in the 16th century are now as dark
in complexion as the Hindus themselves. Africans become lighter in
complexion as they go up from the alluvial river-banks to higher
land, or from the coast; and on the contrary the coast tribes
which drive out the negroes of the interior and take their
territory end by becoming negroes themselves. See, for many of the
above facts, Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of the Race, 195-202.

The law of originally greater plasticity, mentioned in the text,
was first hinted by Hall, the palæontologist of New York. It is
accepted and defined by Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man, 360—“A
new law is coming into view: that species when first introduced
have an innate power of expansion, which enables them rapidly to
extend themselves to the limit of their geographical range, and
also to reach the limit of their divergence into races. This limit
once reached, these races run on in parallel lines until they one
by one run out and disappear. According to this law the most
aberrant races of men might be developed in a few centuries, after
which divergence would cease, and the several lines of variation
would remain permanent, at least so long as the conditions under
which they originated remained.” See the similar view of Von Baer
in Schmid, Theories of Darwin, 55, note. Joseph Cook: Variability
is a lessening quantity; the tendency to change is greatest at the
first, but, like the rate of motion of a stone thrown upward, it
lessens every moment after. Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 125—“The life of
a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava-stream, first bright
and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by
the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks.” Renouf, Hibbert
Lectures, 54—“The further back we go into antiquity, the more
closely does the Egyptian type approach the European.” Rawlinson
says that negroes are not represented in the Egyptian monuments
before 1500 B. C. The influence of climate is very great,
especially in the savage state.

In May, 1891, there died in San Francisco the son of an
interpreter at the Merchants’ Exchange. He was 21 years of age.
Three years before his death his clear skin was his chief claim to
manly beauty. He was attacked by “Addison’s disease,” a gradual
darkening of the color of the surface of the body. At the time of
his death his skin was as dark as that of a full-blooded negro.
His name was George L. Sturtevant. Ratzel, History of Mankind,
1:9, 10—As there is only one species of man, “the reunion into one
real whole of the parts which have diverged after the fashion of
sports” is said to be “the unconscious ultimate aim of all the
movements” which have taken place since man began his wanderings.
“With Humboldt we can only hold fast to the external unity of the
race.” See Sir Wm. Hunter, The Indian Empire, 223, 410; Encyc.
Britannica, 12:808; 20:110; Zöckler, Urgeschichte, 109-132, and in
Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 8:51-71; Prichard, Researches,
5:547-552, and Nat. Hist. of Man, 2:644-656; Duke of Argyll,
Primeval Man, 96-108; Smith, Unity of Human Races, 255-283;
Morris, Conflict of Science and Religion, 325-385; Rawlinson, in
Journ. Christ. Philosophy, April, 1883:359.

III. Essential Elements of Human Nature.

1. The Dichotomous Theory.

Man has a two-fold nature,—on the one hand material, on the other hand
immaterial. He consists of body, and of spirit, or soul. That there are
two, and only two, elements in man’s being, is a fact to which
consciousness testifies. This testimony is confirmed by Scripture, in
which the prevailing representation of man’s constitution is that of
dichotomy.

Dichotomous, from δίχα, “in two,” and τέμνω, “to cut,” = composed
of two parts. Man is as conscious that his immaterial part is a
unity, as that his body is a unity. He knows two, and only two,
parts of his being—body and soul. So man is the true Janus
(Martensen), Mr. Facing-both-ways (Bunyan). That the Scriptures
favor dichotomy will appear by considering:

(_a_) The record of man’s creation (Gen. 2:7), in which, as a result of
the inbreathing of the divine Spirit, the body becomes possessed and
vitalized by a single principle—the living soul.

_Gen. 2:7_—“_And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
a living soul_”—here it is not said that man was first a living
soul, and that then God breathed into him a spirit; but that God
inbreathed spirit, and man became a living soul = God’s life took
possession of clay, and as a result, man had a soul. _Cf._ _Job
27:3_—“_for my life is yet whole in me, And the spirit of God is
in my nostrils_”; _32:8_—“_there is a spirit in man, And the
breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding_”; _33:4_—“_The
Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth
me life._”

(_b_) Passages in which the human soul, or spirit, is distinguished, both
from the divine Spirit from whom it proceeded, and from the body which it
inhabits.

_Num. 16:22_—“_O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh_”;
_Zech. 12:1_—“_Jehovah, who ... formeth the spirit of man within
him_”; _1 Cor. 2:11_—“_the spirit of the man which is in him ...
the Spirit of God_”; _Heb. 12:9_—“_the Father of spirits._” The
passages just mentioned distinguish the spirit of man from the
Spirit of God. The following distinguish the soul, or spirit, of
man from the body which it inhabits: _Gen, 35:18_—“_it came to
pass, as her soul was departing (for she died)_”; _1 K. 17:21_—“_O
Jehovah my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him
again_”; _Eccl. 12:7_—“_the dust returneth to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it_”; _James
2:26_—“_the body apart from the spirit is dead._” The first class
of passages refutes pantheism; the second refutes materialism.

(_c_) The interchangeable use of the terms “soul” and “spirit.”

_Gen. 41:8_—“_his spirit was troubled_”; _cf._ _Ps. 42:6_—“_my
soul is cast down within me._” _John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul
troubled_”; _cf._ _13:21_—“_he was troubled in the spirit._” _Mat.
20:28_—“_to give his life (ψυχήν) a ransom for many_”; _cf._
_27:50_—“_yielded up his spirit (πνεῦμα)._” _Heb. 12:23_—“_spirits
of just men made perfect_”; _cf._ _Rev. 6:9_—“_I saw underneath
the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of
God._” In these passages “_spirit_” and “_soul_” seem to be used
interchangeably.

(_d_) The mention of body and soul (or spirit) as together constituting
the whole man.

_Mat 10:28_—“_able to destroy both soul and body in hell_”; _1
Cor. 5:3_—“_absent in body but present in spirit_”; _3 John 2_—“_I
pray that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul
prospereth._” These texts imply that body and soul (or spirit)
together constitute the whole man.

For advocacy of the dichotomous theory, see Goodwin, in Journ.
Society Bib. Exegesis, 1881:73-86; Godet, Bib. Studies of the O.
T., 32; Oehler, Theology of the O. T., 1:219; Hahn, Bib. Theol. N.
T., 390 _sq._; Schmid, Bib. Theology N. T., 503; Weiss, Bib.
Theology N. T., 214; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 112, 113;
Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:294-298; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:549; 3:249;
Harless, Com. on Eph., 4:23, and Christian Ethics, 22; Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk. 1:164-168; Hodge, in Princeton Review,
1865:116, and Systematic Theol., 2:47-51; Ebrard, Dogmatik,
1:261-263; Wm. H. Hodge, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Apl. 1897.

2. The Trichotomous Theory.

Side by side with this common representation of human nature as consisting
of two parts, are found passages which at first sight appear to favor
trichotomy. It must be acknowledged that πνεῦμα (spirit) and ψυχή (soul),
although often used interchangeably, and always designating the same
indivisible substance, are sometimes employed as contrasted terms.

In this more accurate use, ψυχή denotes man’s immaterial part in its
inferior powers and activities;—as ψυχή, man is a conscious individual,
and, in common with the brute creation, has an animal life, together with
appetite, imagination, memory, understanding. Πνεῦμα, on the other hand,
denotes man’s immaterial part in its higher capacities and faculties;—as
πνεῦμα, man is a being related to God, and possessing powers of reason,
conscience, and free will, which difference him from the brute creation
and constitute him responsible and immortal.

In the following texts, spirit and soul are distinguished from
each other: _1 Thess. 5:23_—“_And the God of peace himself
sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be
preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ_”; _Heb. 4:12_—“_For the word of God is living, and active,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the
dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick
to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart._” Compare _1
Cor. 2:14_—“_Now the natural_ [Gr. “_psychical_”] _man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God_”; _15:44_—“_It is sown a
natural_ [Gr. “_psychical_”] _body; it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural_ [Gr. “psychical”] _body, there is also a
spiritual body_”; _Eph. 4:23_—“_that ye be renewed in the spirit
of your mind_”; _Jude 19_—“_sensual_ [Gr. “_psychical_”], _having
not the Spirit._”

For the proper interpretation of these texts, see note on the next
page. Among those who cite them as proofs of the trichotomous
theory (trichotomous, from τρίχα, “in three parts,” and τέμνω, “to
cut,” = composed of three parts, _i. e._, spirit, soul, and body)
may be mentioned Olshausen, Opuscula, 134, and Com. on _1 Thess.,
5:23_; Beck, Biblische Seelenlehre, 81; Delitzsch, Biblical
Psychology, 117, 118; Göschel, in Herzog, Realencyclopädie, art.:
Seele; also, art. by Auberlen: Geist des Menschen; Cremer, N. T.
Lexicon, on πνεῦμα and ψυχή; Usteri, Paulin. Lehrbegriff, 384
_sq._; Neander, Planting and Training, 394; Van Oosterzee,
Christian Dogmatics, 365, 366; Boardman, in Bap. Quarterly, 1:177,
325, 428; Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man, 62-114; Ellicott,
Destiny of the Creature, 106-125.

The element of truth in trichotomy is simply this, that man has a
triplicity of endowment, in virtue of which the single soul has relations
to matter, to self, and to God. The trichotomous theory, however, as it is
ordinarily defined, endangers the unity and immateriality of our higher
nature, by holding that man consists of three _substances_, or three
component _parts_—body, soul and spirit—and that soul and spirit are as
distinct from each other as are soul and body.

The advocates of this view differ among themselves as to the
nature of the ψυχή and its relation to the other elements of our
being; some (as Delitzsch) holding that the ψυχή is an efflux of
the πνεῦμα, distinct in substance, but not in essence, even as the
divine Word is distinct from God, while yet he is God; others (as
Göschel) regarding the ψυχή, not as a distinct substance, but as a
resultant of the union of the πνεῦμα and the σῶμα. Still others
(as Cremer) hold the ψυχή to be the subject of the personal life
whose principle is the πνεῦμα. Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man,
103—“God is the Creator _ex traduce_ of the animal and
intellectual part of every man.... Not so with the spirit.... It
proceeds from God, not by creation, but by emanation.”

We regard the trichotomous theory as untenable, not only for the reasons
already urged in proof of the dichotomous theory, but from the following
additional considerations:

(_a_) Πνεῦμα, as well as ψυχή, is used of the brute creation.

_Eccl. 3:21_—“_Who knoweth the spirit of man, whether it goeth_
[marg. “_that goeth_”] _upward, and the spirit of the beast,
whether it goeth_ [marg. “_that goeth_”] _downward to the earth?_”
_Rev. 16:3_—“_And the second poured out his bowl into the sea; and
it became blood, as of a dead man; and every living soul died,
even the things that were in the sea_” = the fish.

(_b_) ψυχή is ascribed to Jehovah.

_Amos 6:8_—“_The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by himself_” (lit. “_by
his soul_”) LXX _42:1_—“_my chosen in whom my soul delighteth_”;
_Jer. 9:9_—“_Shall I not visit them for these things? saith
Jehovah; shall not my soul be avenged?_” _Heb. 10:38_—“_my
righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul
hath no pleasure in him._”

(_c_) The disembodied dead are called ψυχαί.

_Rev. 6:9_—“_I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had
been slain for the word of God_”; _cf._ _20:4_—“_souls of them
that had been beheaded._”

(_d_) The highest exercises of religion are attributed to the ψυχή.

_Mark 12:30_—“_thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... with all thy
soul_”; _Luke 1:46_—“_My soul doth magnify the Lord_”; _Heb. 6:18,
19_—“_the hope set before us: which we have as an anchor of the
soul_”; _James 1:21_—“_the implanted word, which is able to save
your souls._”

(_e_) To lose this ψυχή is to lose all.

_Mark 8:36, 37_—“_For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life_ [or “_soul_,” ψυχή]? _For what should
a man give in exchange for his life_ [or ‘_soul_,’ ψυχή]?”

(_f_) The passages chiefly relied upon as supporting trichotomy may be
better explained upon the view already indicated, that soul and spirit are
not two distinct substances or parts, but that they designate the
immaterial principle from different points of view.

_1 Thess. 5:23_—“_may your spirit and soul and body be preserved
entire_” = not a scientific enumeration of the constituent parts
of human nature, but a comprehensive sketch of that nature in its
chief relations; compare _Mark 12:30_—“_thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind, and with all thy strength_”—where none would think of
finding proof of a fourfold division of human nature. On _1 Thess.
5:23_, see Riggenbach (in Lange’s Com.), and Commentary of Prof.
W. A. Stevens. _Heb. 4:12_—“_piercing even to the dividing of soul
and spirit, of both joints and marrow_” = not the dividing of soul
_from_ spirit, or of joints _from_ marrow, but rather the piercing
of the soul and of the spirit, even to their very joints and
marrow; _i. e._, to the very depths of the spiritual nature. On
_Heb. 4:12_, see Ebrard (in Olshausen’s Com.), and Lünemann (in
Meyer’s Com.); also Tholuck, Com. _in loco_. _Jude 19_—“_sensual,
having not the Spirit_” (ψυχικοί, πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες)—even though
πνεῦμα = the human spirit, need not mean that there is no spirit
existing, but only that the spirit is torpid and inoperative—as we
say of a weak man: “he has no mind,” or of an unprincipled man:
“he has no conscience”; so Alford; see Nitzsch, Christian
Doctrine, 202. But πνεῦμα here probably = the divine πνεῦμα. Meyer
takes this view, and the Revised Version capitalizes the word
“_Spirit_.” See Goodwin, Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:85—“The
distinction between ψυχή and πνεῦμα is a _functional_, and not a
_substantial_, distinction.” Moule, Outlines of Christian
Doctrine, 161, 162—“Soul = spirit organized, inseparably linked
with the body; spirit = man’s inner being considered as God’s
gift. Soul = man’s inner being viewed as his own; spirit = man’s
inner being viewed as from God. They are not separate elements.”
See Lightfoot, Essay on St. Paul and Seneca, appended to his Com.
on Philippians, on the influence of the ethical language of
Stoicism on the N. T. writers. Martineau, Seat of Authority,
39—“The difference between man and his companion creatures on this
earth is not that his instinctive life is less than theirs, for in
truth it goes far beyond them; but that in him it acts in the
presence and under the eye of other powers which transform it, and
by giving to it vision as well as light take its blindness away.
He is let into his own secrets.”

We conclude that the immaterial part of man, viewed as an individual and
conscious life, capable of possessing and animating a physical organism,
is called ψυχή; viewed as a rational and moral agent, susceptible of
divine influence and indwelling, this same immaterial part is called
πνεῦμα. The πνεῦμα, then, is man’s nature looking Godward, and capable of
receiving and manifesting the Πνεῦμα ἅγιον; the ψυχή is man’s nature
looking earthward, and touching the world of sense. The πνεῦμα is man’s
higher part, as related to spiritual realities or as capable of such
relation; the ψυχή is man’s higher part, as related to the body, or as
capable of such relation. Man’s being is therefore not trichotomous but
dichotomous, and his immaterial part, while possessing duality of powers,
has unity of substance.

Man’s nature is not a three-storied house, but a two-storied
house, with windows in the upper story looking in two
directions—toward earth and toward heaven. The lower story is the
physical part of us—the body. But man’s “upper story” has two
aspects; there is an outlook toward things below, and a skylight
through which to see the stars. “Soul” says Hovey, “is spirit as
modified by union with the body.” Is man then the same in kind
with the brute, but different in degree? No, man is different in
kind, though possessed of certain powers which the brute has. The
frog is not a magnified sensitive-plant, though his nerves
automatically respond to irritation. The animal is different in
kind from the vegetable, though he has some of the same powers
which the vegetable has. God’s powers include man’s; but man is
not of the same substance with God, nor could man be enlarged or
developed into God. So man’s powers include those of the brute,
but the brute is not of the same substance with man, nor could he
be enlarged or developed into man.

Porter, Human Intellect, 39—“The spirit of man, in addition to its
higher endowments, may also possess the lower powers which
vitalize dead matter into a human body.” It does not follow that
the soul of the animal or plant is capable of man’s higher
functions or developments, or that the subjection of man’s spirit
to body, in the present life, disproves his immortality. Porter
continues: “That the soul begins to exist as a vital force, does
not require that it should always exist as such a force or in
connection with a material body. Should it require another such
body, it may have the power to create it for itself, as it has
formed the one it first inhabited; or it may have already formed
it, and may hold it ready for occupation and use as soon as it
sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth.”

Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 547—“Brutes may have organic life
and sensitivity, and yet remain submerged in nature. It is not
life and sensitivity that lift man above nature, but it is the
distinctive characteristic of personality.” Parkhurst, The Pattern
in the Mount, 17-30, on Prov. 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp
of Jehovah”—not necessarily lighted, but capable of being lighted,
and intended to be lighted, by the touch of the divine flame.
_Cf._ _Mat. 6:22, 23_—“_The lamp of the body.... If therefore the
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness._”

Schleiermacher, Christliche Glaube, 2:487—“We think of the spirit
as soul, only when in the body, so that we cannot speak of an
immortality of the soul, in the proper sense, without bodily
life.” The doctrine of the spiritual body is therefore the
complement to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 221—“By soul we mean only one thing, _i.
e._, an incarnate spirit, a spirit with a body. Thus we never
speak of the souls of angels. They are pure spirits, having no
bodies.” Lisle, Evolution of Spiritual Man, 72—“The animal is the
foundation of the spiritual; it is what the cellar is to the
house; it is the base of supplies.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind,
371-378—“Trichotomy is absolutely untenable on grounds of
psychological science. Man’s reason, or the spirit that is in man,
is not to be regarded as a sort of Mansard roof, built on to one
building in a block, all the dwellings in which are otherwise
substantially alike.... On the contrary, in every set of
characteristics, from those called lowest to those pronounced
highest, the soul of man differences itself from the soul of any
species of animals.... The highest has also the lowest. All must
be assigned to one subject.”

This view of the soul and spirit as different aspects of the same
spiritual principle furnishes a refutation of six important errors:

(_a_) That of the Gnostics, who held that the πνεῦμα is part of the divine
essence, and therefore incapable of sin.

(_b_) That of the Apollinarians, who taught that Christ’s humanity
embraced only σῶμα and ψυχή, while his divine nature furnished the πνεῦμα.

(_c_) That of the Semi-Pelagians, who excepted the human πνεῦμα from the
dominion of original sin.

(_d_) That of Placeus, who held that only the πνεῦμα was directly created
by God (see our section on Theories of Imputation).

(_e_) That of Julius Müller, who held that the ψυχή comes to us from Adam,
but that our πνεῦμα was corrupted in a previous state of being (see page
490).

(_f_) That of the Annihilationists, who hold that man at his creation had
a divine element breathed into him, which he lost by sin, and which he
recovers only in regeneration; so that only when he has this πνεῦμα
restored by virtue of his union with Christ does man become immortal,
death being to the sinner a complete extinction of being.

Tacitus might almost be understood to be a trichotomist when he
writes: “Si ut sapientibus placuit, non extinguuntur cum corpora
_magnæ_ animæ.” Trichotomy allies itself readily with materialism.
Many trichotomists hold that man can exist without a πνεῦμα, but
that the σῶμα and the ψυχή by themselves are mere matter, and are
incapable of eternal existence. Trichotomy, however, when it
speaks of the πνεῦμα as the divine principle in man, seems to
savor of emanation or of pantheism. A modern English poet
describes the glad and winsome child as “A silver stream, Breaking
with laughter from the lake divine, Whence all things flow.”
Another poet, Robert Browning, in his Death in the Desert, 107,
describes body, soul, and spirit, as “What does, what knows, what
is—three souls, one man.”

The Eastern church generally held to trichotomy, and is best
represented by John of Damascus (11:12) who speaks of the soul as
the sensuous life-principle which takes up the spirit—the spirit
being an efflux from God. The Western church, on the other hand,
generally held to dichotomy, and is best represented by Anselm:
“Constat homo ex duabus naturis, ex natura animæ et ex natura
carnis.”

Luther has been quoted upon both sides of the controversy: by
Delitzsch, Bib. Psych., 460-462, as trichotomous, and as making
the Mosaic tabernacle with its three divisions an image of the
tripartite man. “The first division,” he says, “was called the
holy of holies, since God dwelt there, and there was no light
therein. The next was denominated the holy place, for within it
stood a candlestick with seven branches and lamps. The third was
called the atrium or court; this was under the broad heaven, and
was open to the light of the sun. A regenerate man is depicted in
this figure. His spirit is the holy of holies, God’s
dwelling-place, in the darkness of faith, without a light, for he
believes what he neither sees, nor feels, nor comprehends. The
_psyche_ of that man is the holy place, whose seven lights
represent the various powers of understanding, the perception and
knowledge of material and visible things. His body is the atrium
or court, which is open to everybody, so that all can see how he
acts and lives.”

Thomasius, however, in his Christi Person und Werk, 1:164-168,
quotes from Luther the following statement, which is clearly
dichotomous: “The first part, the spirit, is the highest, deepest,
noblest part of man. By it he is fitted to comprehend eternal
things, and it is, in short, the house in which dwell faith and
the word of God. The other, the soul, is this same spirit,
according to nature, but yet in another sort of activity, namely,
in this, that it animates the body and works through it; and it is
its method not to grasp things incomprehensible, but only what
reason can search out, know, and measure.” Thomasius himself says:
“Trichotomy, I hold with Meyer, is not Scripturally sustained.”
Neander, sometimes spoken of as a trichotomist, says that spirit
is soul in its elevated and normal relation to God and divine
things; ψυχή is that same soul in its relation to the sensuous and
perhaps sinful things of this world. Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T.,
32—“Spirit = the breath of God, considered as independent of the
body; soul = that same breath, in so far as it gives life to the
body.”

The doctrine we have advocated, moreover, in contrast with the
heathen view, puts honor upon man’s body, as proceeding from the
hand of God and as therefore originally pure (_Gen. 1:31_—“_And
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very
good_”); as intended to be the dwelling place of the divine Spirit
(_1 Cor. 6:19_—“_know ye not that your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?_”); and as
containing the germ of the heavenly body (_1 Cor. 15:44_—“_it is
sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body_”; _Rom.
8:11_—“_shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his
Spirit that dwelleth in you_”—here many ancient authorities read
“_because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you_”—διά τὸ ἐνοικοῦν
αὐτοῦ πνεῦμα). Birks, in his Difficulties of Belief, suggests that
man, unlike angels, may have been provided with a fleshly body,
(1) to objectify sin, and (2) to enable Christ to unite himself to
the race, in order to save it.

IV. Origin of the Soul.

Three theories with regard to this subject have divided opinion:

1. The Theory of Preëxistence.

This view was held by Plato, Philo, and Origen; by the first, in order to
explain the soul’s possession of ideas not derived from sense; by the
second, to account for its imprisonment in the body; by the third, to
justify the disparity of conditions in which men enter the world. We
concern ourselves, however, only with the forms which the view has assumed
in modern times. Kant and Julius Müller in Germany, and Edward Beecher in
America, have advocated it, upon the ground that the inborn depravity of
the human will can be explained only by supposing a personal act of
self-determination in a previous, or timeless, state of being.

The truth at the basis of the theory of preëxistence is simply the
ideal existence of the soul, before birth, in the mind of God—that
is, God’s foreknowledge of it. The intuitive ideas of which the
soul finds itself in possession, such as space, time, cause,
substance, right, God, are evolved from itself; in other words,
man is so constituted that he perceives these truths upon proper
occasions or conditions. The apparent recollection that we have
seen at some past time a landscape which we know to be now for the
first time before us, is an illusory putting together of
fragmentary concepts or a mistaking of a part for the whole; we
have seen something like a part of the landscape,—we fancy that we
have seen this landscape, and the whole of it. Our recollection of
a past event or scene is one whole, but this one idea may have an
indefinite number of subordinate ideas existing within it. The
sight of something which is similar to one of these parts suggests
the past whole. Coleridge: “The great law of the imagination that
likeness in part tends to become likeness of the whole.” Augustine
hinted that this illusion of memory may have played an important
part in developing the belief in metempsychosis.

Other explanations are those of William James, in his Psychology:
The brain tracts excited by the event proper, and those excited in
its recall, are different; Baldwin, Psychology, 263, 264: We may
remember what we have seen in a dream, or there may be a revival
of ancestral or race experiences. Still others suggest that the
two hemispheres of the brain act asynchronously;
self-consciousness or apperception is distinguished from
perception; divorce, from fatigue, of the processes of sensation
and perception, causes paramnesia. Sully, Illusions, 280, speaks
of an organic or atavistic memory: “May it not happen that by the
law of hereditary transmission ... ancient experiences will now
and then reflect themselves in our mental life, and so give rise
to apparently personal recollections?” Letson, The Crowd, believes
that the mob is atavistic and that it bases its action upon
inherited impulses: “The inherited reflexes are atavistic
memories” (quoted in Colegrove, Memory, 204).

Plato held that intuitive ideas are reminiscences of things
learned in a previous state of being; he regarded the body as the
grave of the soul; and urged the fact that the soul had knowledge
before it entered the body, as proof that the soul would have
knowledge after it left the body, that is, would be immortal. See
Plato, Meno, 82-85, Phædo, 72-75, Phædrus, 245-250, Republic,
5:460 and 10:614. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 36, 37—“Plato
represents preëxistent souls as having set before them a choice of
virtue. The choice is free, but it will determine the destiny of
each soul. Not God, but he who chooses, is responsible for his
choice. After making their choice, the souls go to the fates, who
spin the threads of their destiny, and it is thenceforth
irreversible. As Christian theology teaches that man was free but
lost his freedom by the fall of Adam, so Plato affirms that the
preëxistent soul is free until it has chosen its lot in life.” See
Introductions to the above mentioned works of Plato in Jowett’s
translation. Philo held that all souls are emanations from God,
and that those who allowed themselves, unlike the angels, to be
attracted by matter, are punished for this fall by imprisonment in
the body, which corrupts them, and from which they must break
loose. See Philo, De Gigantibus, Pfeiffer’s ed., 2:360-364. Origen
accounted for disparity of conditions at birth by the differences
in the conduct of these same souls in a previous state. God’s
justice at the first made all souls equal; condition here
corresponds to the degree of previous guilt; _Mat. 20:3_—“_others
standing in the market place idle_” = souls not yet brought into
the world. The Talmudists regarded all souls as created at once in
the beginning, and as kept like grains of corn in God’s granary,
until the time should come for joining each to its appointed body.
See Origen, De Anima, 7; περὶ ἀρχῶν, ii:9:6; _cf._ i:1:2, 4, 18;
4:36. Origen’s view was condemned at the Synod of Constantinople,
538. Many of the preceding facts and references are taken from
Bruch, Lehre der Präexistenz, translated in Bib. Sac., 20:681-733.

For modern advocates of the theory, see Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, sec. 15; Religion in. d. Grenzen d. bl. Vernunft, 26, 27;
Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:357-401; Edward Beecher,
Conflict of Ages. The idea of preëxistence has appeared to a
notable extent in modern poetry. See Vaughan, The Retreate (1621);
Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood;
Tennyson, Two Voices, stanzas 105-119, and Early Sonnets, 25—“As
when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, And ebb into a former
life, or seem To lapse far back in some confused dream To states
of mystical similitude; If one but speaks or hems or stirs his
chair, Ever the wonder waxeth more and more, So that we say ‘All
this hath been before, All this hath been, I know not when or
where.’ So, friend, when first I looked upon your face, Our
thought gave answer each to each, so true—Opposed mirrors each
reflecting each—That though I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you, And either lived in
either’s heart and speech.” Robert Browning, La Saisiaz, and
Christina: “Ages past the soul existed; Here an age ’tis resting
merely, And hence fleets again for ages.” Rossetti, House of Life:
“I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell; I know
the grass beyond the door, The sweet, keen smell, The sighing
sound, the lights along the shore. You have been mine before, How
long ago I may not know; But just when, at that swallow’s soar,
Your neck turned so, Some veil did fall—I knew it all of yore”;
quoted in Colegrove, Memory, 103-106, who holds the phenomenon due
to false induction and interpretation.

Briggs, School, College and Character, 95—“Some of us remember the
days when we were on earth for the first time;”—which reminds us
of the boy who remembered sitting in a corner before he was born
and crying for fear he would be a girl. A more notable
illustration is that found in the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by
Lockhart, his son-in-law, 8:274—“Yesterday, at dinner time, I was
strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of
preëxistence—viz., a confused idea that nothing that passed was
said for the first time—that the same topics had been discussed
and the same persons had started the same opinions on them. It is
true there might have been some ground for recollections,
considering that three at least of the company were old friends
and had kept much company together.... But the sensation was so
strong as to resemble what is called a mirage in the desert, or a
calenture on board of ship, when lakes are seen in the desert and
sylvan landscapes in the sea. It was very distressing yesterday
and brought to mind the fancies of Bishop Berkeley about an ideal
world. There was a vile sense of want of reality in all I did and
said.... I drank several glasses of wine, but these only
aggravated the disorder. I did not find the _in vino veritas_ of
the philosophers.”

To the theory of preëxistence we urge the following objections:

(_a_) It is not only wholly without support from Scripture, but it
directly contradicts the Mosaic account of man’s creation in the image of
God, and Paul’s description of all evil and death in the human race as the
result of Adam’s sin.

_Gen. 1:27_—“_And God created man in his own image, in the image
of God created he him_”; _31_—“_And God saw every thing that he
had made, and, behold, it was very good._” _Rom.
5:12_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned._” The theory of preëxistence would still leave it
doubtful whether all men are sinners, or whether God assembles
only sinners upon the earth.

(_b_) If the soul in this preëxistent state was conscious and personal, it
is inexplicable that we should have no remembrance of such preëxistence,
and of so important a decision in that previous condition of being;—if the
soul was yet unconscious and impersonal, the theory fails to show how a
moral act involving consequences so vast could have been performed at all.

Christ remembered his preëxistent state; why should not we? There
is every reason to believe that in the future state we shall
remember our present existence; why should we not now remember the
past state from which we came? It may be objected that
Augustinians hold to a sin of the race in Adam—a sin which none of
Adam’s descendants can remember. But we reply that no Augustinian
holds to a personal existence of each member of the race in Adam,
and therefore no Augustinian needs to account for lack of memory
of Adam’s sin. The advocate of preëxistence, however, does hold to
a personal existence of each soul in a previous state, and
therefore needs to account for our lack of memory of it.

(_c_) The view sheds no light either upon the origin of sin, or upon God’s
justice in dealing with it, since it throws back the first transgression
to a state of being in which there was no flesh to tempt, and then
represents God as putting the fallen into sensuous conditions in the
highest degree unfavorable to their restoration.

This theory only increases the difficulty of explaining the origin
of sin, by pushing back its beginning to a state of which we know
less than we do of the present. To say that the soul in that
previous state was only potentially conscious and personal, is to
deny any real probation, and to throw the blame of sin on God the
Creator. Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:228—“In modern times,
the philosophers Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer have explained
the bad from an intelligible act of freedom, which (according to
Schelling and Schopenhauer) also at the same time effectuates the
temporal existence and condition of the individual soul. But what
are we to think of as meant by such a mystical deed or act through
which the subject of it first comes into existence? Is it not
this, that perhaps under this singular disguise there is concealed
the simple thought that the origin of the bad lies not so much in
a _doing_ of the individual freedom as rather in the _rise_ of
it,—that is to say, in the process of development through which
the natural man becomes a moral man, and the merely potentially
rational man becomes an actually rational man?”

(_d_) While this theory accounts for inborn spiritual sin, such as pride
and enmity to God, it gives no explanation of inherited sensual sin, which
it holds to have come from Adam, and the guilt of which must logically be
denied.

While certain forms of the preëxistence theory are exposed to the
last objection indicated in the text, Julius Müller claims that
his own view escapes it; see Doctrine of Sin, 2:393. His theory,
he says, “would contradict holy Scripture if it derived inborn
sinfulness _solely_ from this extra-temporal act of the
individual, without recognizing in this sinfulness the element of
hereditary depravity in the sphere of the natural life, and its
connection with the sin of our first parents.” Müller, whose
trichotomy here determines his whole subsequent scheme, holds only
the πνεῦμα to have thus fallen in a preëxistent state. The ψυχή
comes, with the body, from Adam. The tempter only brought man’s
latent perversity of will into open transgression. Sinfulness, as
hereditary, does not involve guilt, but the hereditary principle
is the “medium through which the transcendent self-perversion of
the spiritual nature of man is transmitted to his whole temporal
mode of being.” While man is born guilty as to his πνεῦμα, for the
reason that this πνεῦμα sinned in a preëxistent state, he is also
born guilty as to his ψυχή, because this was one with the first
man in his transgression.

Even upon the most favorable statement of Müller’s view, we fail
to see how it can consist with the organic unity of the race; for
in that which chiefly constitutes us men—the πνεῦμα—we are as
distinct and separate creations as are the angels. We also fail to
see how, upon this view, Christ can be said to take our nature;
or, if he takes it, how it can be without sin. See Ernesti,
Ursprung der Sünde, 2:1-247; Frohschammer, Ursprung der Seele,
11-17: Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:92-122; Bruch, Lehre der
Präexistenz, translated in Bib. Sac., 20:681-733. Also Bib. Sac.,
11:186-191; 12:156; 17:419-427; 20:447; Kahnis, Dogmatik,
3:250—“This doctrine is inconsistent with the indisputable fact
that the souls of children are like those of the parents; and it
ignores the connection of the individual with the race.”

2. The Creatian Theory.

This view was held by Aristotle, Jerome, and Pelagius, and in modern times
has been advocated by most of the Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians.
It regards the soul of each human being as immediately created by God and
joined to the body either at conception, at birth, or at some time between
these two. The advocates of the theory urge in its favor certain texts of
Scripture, referring to God as the Creator of the human spirit, together
with the fact that there is a marked individuality in the child, which
cannot be explained as a mere reproduction of the qualities existing in
the parents.

Creatianism, as ordinarily held, regards only the body as
propagated from past generations. Creatianists who hold to
trichotomy would say, however, that the animal soul, the ψυχή, is
propagated with the body, while the highest part of man, the
πνεῦμα, is in each case a direct creation of God,—the πνεῦμα not
being created, as the advocates of preëxistence believe, ages
before the body, but rather at the time that the body assumes its
distinct individuality.

Aristotle (De Anima) first gives definite expression to this view.
Jerome speaks of God as “making souls daily.” The scholastics
followed Aristotle, and through the influence of the Reformed
church, creatianism has been the prevailing opinion for the last
two hundred years. Among its best representatives are Turretin,
Inst., 5:13 (vol. 1:425); Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:65-76; Martensen,
Dogmatics, 141-148; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 99-106. Certain
Reformed theologians have defined very exactly God’s method of
creation. Polanus (5:31:1) says that God breathes the soul into
boys, forty days, and into girls, eighty days, after conception.
Göschel (in Herzog, Encyclop., art.: Seele) holds that while
dichotomy leads to traducianism, trichotomy allies itself to that
form of creatianism which regards the πνεῦμα as a direct creation
of God, but the ψυχή as propagated with the body. To the latter
answers the family name; to the former the Christian name. Shall
we count George Macdonald as a believer in Preëxistence or in
Creatianism, when he writes in his Baby’s Catechism: “Where did
you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here. Where
did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the sky, as I came through.
Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got
here. Where did you get that pearly ear? God spoke, and it came
out to hear. How did they all just come to be you? God thought
about me, and so I grew.”

Creatianism is untenable for the following reasons:

(_a_) The passages adduced in its support may with equal propriety be
regarded as expressing God’s mediate agency in the origination of human
souls; while the general tenor of Scripture, as well as its
representations of God as the author of man’s body, favor this latter
interpretation.

Passages commonly relied upon by creatianists are the following:
_Eccl. 12:7_—“_the spirit returneth unto God who gave it_”; _Is.
57:16_—“_the souls that I have made_”; _Zech. 12:1_—“_Jehovah ...
who formeth the spirit of man within him_”; _Heb. 12:9_—“_the
Father of spirits._” But God is with equal clearness declared to
be the former of man’s body: see _Ps. 139:13, 14_—“_thou didst
form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me_ [marg. “_knit me
together_”] _in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks unto thee;
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy
works_”; _Jer. 1:5_—“_I formed thee in the belly._” Yet we do not
hesitate to interpret these latter passages as expressive of
mediate, not immediate, creatorship,—God works through natural
laws of generation and development so far as the production of
man’s body is concerned. None of the passages first mentioned
forbid us to suppose that he works through these same natural laws
in the production of the soul. The truth in creatianism is the
presence and operation of God in all natural processes. A
transcendent God manifests himself in all physical begetting.
Shakespeare: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew
them how we will.” Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 112—“Creatianism, which
emphasizes the divine origin of man, is entirely compatible with
Traducianism, which emphasizes the mediation of natural agencies.
So for the race as a whole, its origin in a creative activity of
God is quite consistent with its being a product of natural
evolution.”

(_b_) Creatianism regards the earthly father as begetting only the body of
his child—certainly as not the father of the child’s highest part. This
makes the beast to possess nobler powers of propagation than man; for the
beast multiplies himself after his own image.

The new physiology properly views soul, not as something added
from without, but as the animating principle of the body from the
beginning and as having a determining influence upon its whole
development. That children are like their parents, in intellectual
and spiritual as well as in physical respects, is a fact of which
the creatian theory gives no proper explanation. Mason, Faith of
the Gospel, 115—“The love of parents to children and of children
to parents protests against the doctrine that only the body is
propagated.” Aubrey Moore, Science and the Faith, 207,—quoted in
Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1893:876—“Instead of the physical derivation
of the soul, we stand for the spiritual derivation of the body.”
We would amend this statement by saying that we stand for the
spiritual derivation of both soul and body, natural law being only
the operation of spirit, human and divine.

(_c_) The individuality of the child, even in the most extreme cases, as
in the sudden rise from obscure families and surroundings of marked men
like Luther, may be better explained by supposing a law of variation
impressed upon the species at its beginning—a law whose operation is
foreseen and supervised by God.

The differences of the child from the parent are often
exaggerated; men are generally more the product of their ancestry
and of their time than we are accustomed to think. Dickens made
angelic children to be born of depraved parents, and to grow up in
the slums. But this writing belongs to a past generation, when the
facts of heredity were unrecognized. George Eliot’s school is
nearer the truth; although she exaggerates the doctrine of
heredity in turn, until all idea of free will and all hope of
escaping our fate vanish. Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 78,
90—“Separate motives, handed down from generation to generation,
sometimes remaining latent for great periods, to become suddenly
manifested under conditions the nature of which is not
discernible.... Conflict of inheritances [from different
ancestors] may lead to the institution of variety.”

Sometimes, in spite of George Eliot, a lily grows out of a
stagnant pool—how shall we explain the fact? We must remember that
the paternal and the maternal elements are themselves unlike; the
union of the two may well produce a third in some respects unlike
either; as, when two chemical elements unite, the product differs
from either of the constituents. We must remember also that
_nature_ is one factor; _nurture_ is another; and that the latter
is often as potent as the former (see Galton, Inquiries into Human
Faculty, 77-81). Environment determines to a large extent both the
fact and the degree of development. Genius is often another name
for Providence. Yet before all and beyond all we must recognize a
manifold wisdom of God, which in the very organization of species
impresses upon it a law of variation, so that at proper times and
under proper conditions the old is modified in the line of
progress and advance to something higher. Dante, Purgatory, canto
vii—“Rarely into the branches of the tree Doth human worth mount
up; and so ordains He that bestows it, that as his free gift It
may be called.” Pompilia, the noblest character in Robert
Browning’s Ring and the Book, came of “a bad lot.” Geo. A. Gordon,
Christ of To-day, 123-126—“It is mockery to account for Abraham
Lincoln and Robert Burns and William Shakespeare upon naked
principles of heredity and environment.... All intelligence and
all high character are transcendent, and have their source in the
mind and heart of God. It is in the range of Christ’s
transcendence of his earthly conditions that we note the complete
uniqueness of his person.”

(_d_) This theory, if it allows that the soul is originally possessed of
depraved tendencies, makes God the direct author of moral evil; if it
holds the soul to have been created pure, it makes God indirectly the
author of moral evil, by teaching that he puts this pure soul into a body
which will inevitably corrupt it.

The decisive argument against creatianism is this one, that it
makes God the author of moral evil. See Kahnis, Dogmatik,
3:250—“Creatianism rests upon a justly antiquated dualism between
soul and body, and is irreconcilable with the sinful condition of
the human soul. The truth in the doctrine is just this only, that
generation can bring forth an immortal human life only according
to the power imparted by God’s word, and with the special
coöperation of God himself.” The difficulty of supposing that God
immediately creates a pure soul, only to put it into a body that
will infallibly corrupt it—“sicut vinum in vase acetoso”—has led
many of the most thoughtful Reformed theologians to modify the
creatian doctrine by combining it with traducianism.

Rothe, Dogmatik, 1:249-251, holds to creatianism in a wider
sense—a union of the paternal and maternal elements under the
express and determining efficiency of God. Ebrard, Dogmatik,
1:327-332, regards the soul as new-created, yet by a process of
mediate creation according to law, which he calls “metaphysical
generation.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:56, says that the
individual is not simply a manifestation of the species; God
applies to the origination of every single man a special creative
thought and act of will; yet he does this through the species, so
that it is creation by law,—else the child would be, not a
continuation of the old species, but the establishment of a new
one. So in speaking of the human soul of Christ, Dorner says
(3:340-349) that the soul itself does not owe its origin to Mary
nor to the species, but to the creative act of God. This soul
appropriates to itself from Mary’s body the elements of a human
form, purifying them in the process so far as is consistent with
the beginning of a life yet subject to development and human
weakness.

Bowne, Metaphysics, 500—“The laws of heredity must be viewed
simply as descriptions of a fact and never as its explanation. Not
as if ancestors passed on something to posterity, but solely
because of the inner consistency of the divine action” are
children like their parents. We cannot regard either of these
mediating views as self-consistent or intelligible. We pass on
therefore to consider the traducian theory which we believe more
fully to meet the requirements of Scripture and of reason. For
further discussion of creatianism, see Frohschammer, Ursprung der
Seele, 18-58; Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, 1-17.

3. The Traducian Theory.

This view was propounded by Tertullian, and was implicitly held by
Augustine. In modern times it has been the prevailing opinion of the
Lutheran Church. It holds that the human race was immediately created in
Adam, and, as respects both body and soul, was propagated from him by
natural generation—all souls since Adam being only mediately created by
God, as the upholder of the laws of propagation which were originally
established by him.

Tertullian, De Anima: “Tradux peccati, tradux animæ.” Gregory of
Nyssa: “Man being one, consisting of soul and body, the common
beginning of his constitution must be supposed also one; so that
he may not be both older and younger than himself—that in him
which is bodily being first, and the other coming after” (quoted
in Crippen, Hist. of Christ. Doct., 80). Augustine, De Pec. Mer.
et Rem., 3:7—“In Adam all sinned, at the time when in his nature
all were still that one man”; De Civ. Dei, 13:14—“For we all were
in that one man, when we all were that one man.... The form in
which we each should live was not as yet individually created and
distributed to us, but there already existed the seminal nature
from which we were propagated.”

Augustine, indeed, wavered in his statements with regard to the
origin of the soul, apparently fearing that an explicit and
pronounced traducianism might involve materialistic consequences;
yet, as logically lying at the basis of his doctrine of original
sin, traducianism came to be the ruling view of the Lutheran
reformers. In his Table Talk, Luther says: “The reproduction of
mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the
matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of
the species by fashioning them out of clay, in the way Adam was
fashioned; as I should have counseled him also to let the sun
remain always suspended over the earth, like a great lamp,
maintaining perpetual light and heat.”

Traducianism holds that man, as a species, was created in Adam. In
Adam, the substance of humanity was yet undistributed. We derive
our immaterial as well as our material being, by natural laws of
propagation, from Adam,—each individual man after Adam possessing
a part of the substance that was originated in him. Sexual
reproduction has for its purpose the keeping of variations within
limit. Every marriage tends to bring back the individual type to
that of the species. The offspring represents not one of the
parents but both. And, as each of these parents represents two
grandparents, the offspring really represents the whole race.
Without this conjugation the individual peculiarities would
reproduce themselves in divergent lines like the shot from a
shot-gun. Fission needs to be supplemented by conjugation. The use
of sexual reproduction is to preserve the average individual in
the face of a progressive tendency to variation. In asexual
reproduction the offspring start on deviating lines and never mix
their qualities with those of their mates. Sexual reproduction
makes the individual the type of the species and gives solidarity
to the race. See Maupas, quoted by Newman Smith, Place of Death in
Evolution, 19-22.

John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, is a Traducian. He has no
faith in the notion of a soul separate from and inhabiting the
body. He believes in a certain corporeity of the soul. Mind and
thought are rooted in the bodily organism. Soul was not inbreathed
after the body was formed. The breathing of God into man’s
nostrils was only the quickening impulse to that which already had
life. God does not create souls every day. Man is a body-and-soul,
or a soul-body, and he transmits himself as such. Harris, Moral
Evolution, 171—The individual man has a great number of ancestors
as well as a great number of descendants. He is the central point
of an hour-glass, or a strait between two seas which widen out
behind and before. How then shall we escape the conclusion that
the human race was most numerous at the beginning? We must
remember that other children have the same great-grandparents with
ourselves; that there have been inter-marriages; and that, after
all, the generations run on in parallel lines, that the lines
spread a little in some countries and periods, and narrow a little
in other countries and periods. It is like a wall covered with
paper in diamond pattern. The lines diverge and converge, but the
figures are parallel. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:7-94, Hist.
Doctrine, 2:1-26, Discourses and Essays, 259; Baird, Elohim
Revealed, 137-151, 335-384; Edwards, Works, 2:483; Hopkins, Works,
1:289; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 161; Delitzsch, Bib. Psych.,
128-142; Frohschammer, Ursprung der Seele, 59-224.

With regard to this view we remark:

(_a_) It seems best to accord with Scripture, which represents God as
creating the species in Adam (Gen. 1:27), and as increasing and
perpetuating it through secondary agencies (1:28; _cf._ 22). Only once is
breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life (2:7, _cf._ 22; 1 Cor.
11:8. Gen. 4:1; 5:3; 46:26; _cf._ Acts 17:21-26; Heb. 7:10), and after
man’s formation God ceases from his work of creation (Gen. 2:2).

_Gen. 1:27_—“_And God created man in his own image, in the image
of God created he him: male and female created he them_”;
_28_—“_And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth_”; _cf._ _22_—of the brute
creation: “_And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply
on the earth._” _Gen. 2:7_—“_And Jehovah God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul_”; _cf._ _22_—“_and the rib
which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto the man_”; _1 Cor. 11:8_—“_For the man is not of
the woman; but the woman of the man_” (ἐξ ἀνδρός). _Gen.
4:1_—“_Eve ... bare Cain_”; _5:3_—“_Adam ... begat a son ...
Seth_”; _46:26_—“_All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt,
that came out of his loins_”; _Acts 17:26_—“_he made of one_
[“father” or “body”] _every nation of men_”; _Heb. 7:10_—Levi
“_was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedek met him_”;
_Gen. 2:2_—“_And on the seventh day God finished his work which he
had made, __ and he rested on the seventh day from all his work
which he had made._” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:19-29, adduces also
_John 1:13; 3:6_; _Rom. 1:13; 5:12_; _1 Cor. 15:22_; _Eph. 2:3_;
_Heb. 12:9_; _Ps. 139:15, 16_. Only Adam had the right to be a
creatianist. Westcott, Com. on Hebrews, 114—“Levi paying tithes in
Abraham implies that descendants are included in the ancestor so
far that his acts have force for them. Physically, at least, the
dead so rule the living. The individual is not a completely
self-centred being. He is member in a body. So far traducianism is
true. But, if this were all, man would be a mere result of the
past, and would have no individual responsibility. There is an
element not derived from birth, though it may follow upon it.
Recognition of individuality is the truth in creatianism. Power of
vision follows upon preparation of an organ of vision, modified by
the latter but not created by it. So we have the social unity of
the race, _plus_ the personal responsibility of the individual,
the influence of common thoughts _plus_ the power of great men,
the foundation of hope _plus_ the condition of judgment.”

(_b_) It is favored by the analogy of vegetable and animal life, in which
increase of numbers is secured, not by a multiplicity of immediate
creations, but by the natural derivation of new individuals from a parent
stock. A derivation of the human soul from its parents no more implies a
materialistic view of the soul and its endless division and subdivision,
than the similar derivation of the brute proves the principle of
intelligence in the lower animals to be wholly material.

God’s method is not the method of endless miracle. God works in
nature through second causes. God does not create a new vital
principle at the beginning of existence of each separate apple,
and of each separate dog. Each of these is the result of a
self-multiplying force, implanted once for all in the first of its
race. To say, with Moxom (Baptist Review, 1881:278), that God is
the immediate author of each new individual, is to deny second
causes, and to merge nature in God. The whole tendency of modern
science is in the opposite direction. Nor is there any good reason
for making the origin of the individual human soul an exception to
the general rule. Augustine wavered in his traducianism because he
feared the inference that the soul is divided and subdivided,—that
is, that it is composed of parts, and is therefore material in its
nature. But it does not follow that all separation is material
separation. We do not, indeed, know how the soul is propagated.
But we know that animal life is propagated, and still that it is
not material, nor composed of parts. The fact that the soul is not
material, nor composed of parts, is no reason why it may not be
propagated also.

It is well to remember that _substance_ does not necessarily imply
either _extension_ or _figure_. _Substantia_ is simply that which
stands under, underlies, supports, or in other words that which is
the _ground_ of phenomena. The propagation of mind therefore does
not involve any dividing up, or splitting off, as if the mind were
a material mass. Flame is propagated, but not by division and
subdivision. Professor Ladd is a creatianist, together with Lotze,
whom he quotes, but he repudiates the idea that the mind is
susceptible of division; see Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 206,
359-366—“The mind comes from nowhere, for it never was, as mind,
in space, is not now in space, and cannot be conceived of as
coming and going in space.... Mind is a growth.... Parents do not
transmit their minds to their offspring. The child’s mind does not
exist before it acts. Its activities _are_ its existence.” So we
might say that flame has no existence before it acts. Yet it may
owe its existence to a preceding flame. The Indian proverb is: “No
lotus without a stem.” Hall Caine, in his novel The Manxman, tells
us that the Deemster of the Isle of Man had two sons. These two
sons were as unlike each other as are the inside and the outside
of a bowl. But the bowl was old Deemster himself. Hartley
Coleridge inherited his father’s imperious desire for stimulants
and with it his inability to resist their temptation.

(_c_) The observed transmission not merely of physical, but of mental and
spiritual, characteristics in families and races, and especially the
uniformly evil moral tendencies and dispositions which all men possess
from their birth, are proof that in soul, as well as in body, we derive
our being from our human ancestry.

Galton, in his Hereditary Genius, and Inquiries into Human
Faculty, furnishes abundant proof of the transmission of mental
and spiritual characteristics from father to son. Illustrations,
in the case of families, are the American Adamses, the English
Georges, the French Bourbons, the German Bachs. Illustrations, in
the case of races, are the Indians, the Negroes, the Chinese, the
Jews. Hawthorne represented the introspection and the conscience
of Puritan New England. Emerson had a minister among his ancestry,
either on the paternal or the maternal side, for eight generations
back. Every man is “a chip of the old block.” “A man is an
omnibus, in which all his ancestors are seated” (O. W. Holmes).
Variation is one of the properties of living things,—the other is
transmission. “On a dissecting table, in the membranes of a
new-born infant’s body, can be seen ‘the drunkard’s tinge.’ The
blotches on his grand-child’s cheeks furnish a mirror to the old
debauchee. Heredity is God’s visiting of sin to the third and
fourth generations.” On heredity and depravity, see Phelps, in
Bib. Sac., Apr. 1884:254—“When every molecule in the paternal
brain bears the shape of a point of interrogation, it would border
on the miraculous if we should find the exclamation-sign of faith
in the brain-cells of the child.”

Robert G. Ingersoll said that most great men have great mothers,
and that most great women have great fathers. Most of the great
are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and
the depression of posterity on the other. Hawthorne’s House of the
Seven Gables illustrates the principle of heredity. But in his
Marble Faun and Transformation, Hawthorne unwisely intimates that
sin is a necessity to virtue, a background or condition of good.
Dryden, Absalom and Ahithophel, 1:156—“Great wits are sure to
madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
Lombroso, The Man of Genius, maintains that genius is a mental
disease allied to epileptiform mania or the dementia of cranks. If
this were so, we should infer that civilization is the result of
insanity, and that, so soon as Napoleons, Dantes and Newtons
manifest themselves, they should be confined in Genius Asylums.
Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, comes nearer the truth: “A
solitary great man’s worth the world. God takes the business into
his own hands At such time: Who creates the novel flower Contrives
to guard and give it breathing-room.... ’Tis the great Gardener
grafts the excellence On wildlings, where he will.”

(_d_) The traducian doctrine embraces and acknowledges the element of
truth which gives plausibility to the creatian view. Traducianism,
properly defined, admits a divine concurrence throughout the whole
development of the human species, and allows, under the guidance of a
superintending Providence, special improvements in type at the birth of
marked men, similar to those which we may suppose to have occurred in the
introduction of new varieties in the animal creation.

Page-Roberts, Oxford University Sermons: “It is no more unjust
that man should inherit evil tendencies, than that he should
inherit good. To make the former impossible is to make the latter
impossible. To object to the law of heredity, is to object to
God’s ordinance of society, and to say that God should have made
men, like the angels, a company, and not a race.” The common moral
characteristics of the race can only be accounted for upon the
Scriptural view that “_that which is born of the flesh is flesh_”
(_John 3:6_). Since propagation is a propagation of soul, as well
as body, we see that to beget children under improper conditions
is a crime, and that fœticide is murder. Haeckel, Evolution of
Man, 2:3—“The human embryo passes through the whole course of its
development in forty weeks. Each man is really older by this
period than is usually assumed. When, for example, a child is said
to be nine and a quarter years old, he is really ten years old.”
Is this the reason why Hebrews call a child a year old at birth?
President Edwards prayed for his children and his children’s
children to the end of time, and President Woolsey congratulated
himself that he was one of the inheritors of those prayers. R. W.
Emerson: “How can a man get away from his ancestors?” Men of
genius should select their ancestors with great care. When begin
the instruction of a child? A hundred years before he is born. A
lady whose children were noisy and troublesome said to a Quaker
relative that she wished she could get a good Quaker governess for
them, to teach them the quiet ways of the Society of Friends. “It
would not do them that service,” was the reply; “they should have
been rocked in a Quaker cradle, if they were to learn Quakerly
ways.”

Galton, Natural Inheritance, 104—“The child inherits partly from
his parents, partly from his ancestry. In every population that
intermarries freely, when the genealogy of any man is traced far
backwards, his ancestry will be found to consist of such varied
elements that they are indistinguishable from the sample taken at
haphazard from the general population. Galton speaks of the
tendency of peculiarities to revert to the general type, and says
that a man’s brother is twice as nearly related to him as his
father is, and nine times as nearly as his cousin. The mean
stature of any particular class of men will be the same as that of
the race; in other words, it will be mediocre. This tells heavily
against the full hereditary transmission of any rare and valuable
gift, as only a few of the many children would resemble their
parents.” We may add to these thoughts of Galton that Christ
himself, as respects his merely human ancestry, was not so much
son of Mary, as he was Son of man.

Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 144-167—In an investigated case,
“in seven and a half generations the maximum ancestry for one
person is 382, or for three persons 1146. The names of 452 of
them, or nearly half, are recorded, and these 452 named ancestors
are not 452 distinct persons, but only 149, many of them, in the
remote generations, being common ancestors of all three in many
lines. If the lines of descent from the unrecorded ancestors were
interrelated in the same way, as they would surely be in an old
and stable community, the total ancestry of these three persons
for seven and a half generations would be 378 persons instead of
1146. The descendants of many die out. All the members of a
species descend from a few ancestors in a remote generation, and
these few are the common ancestors of all. Extinction of family
names is very common. We must seek in the modern world and not in
the remote past for an explanation of that diversity among
individuals which passes under the name of variation. The
genealogy of a species is not a tree, but a slender thread of very
few strands, a little frayed at the near end, but of immeasurable
length. A fringe of loose ends all along the thread may represent
the animals which having no descendants are now as if they had
never been. Each of the strands at the near end is important as a
possible line of union between the thread of the past and that of
the distant future.”

Weismann, Heredity, 270, 272, 380, 384, denies Brooks’s theory
that the male element represents the principle of variation. He
finds the cause of variation in the union of elements from the two
parents. Each child unites the hereditary tendencies of two
parents, and so must be different from either. The third
generation is a compromise between four different hereditary
tendencies. Brooks finds the cause of variation in sexual
reproduction, but he bases his theory upon the transmission of
acquired characters. This transmission is denied by Weismann, who
says that the male germ-cell does not play a different part from
that of the female in the construction of the embryo. Children
inherit quite as much from the father as from the mother. Like
twins are derived from the same egg-cell. No two germ-cells
contain exactly the same combinations of hereditary tendencies.
Changes in environment and organism affect posterity, not
directly, but only through other changes produced in its germinal
matter. Hence efforts to reach high food cannot directly produce
the giraffe. See Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, 235-239;
Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems; Ribot, Heredity; Woods,
Heredity in Royalty. On organic unity in connection with realism,
see Hodge, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1865:126-135; Dabney, Theology,
317-321.

V. The Moral Nature of Man.

By the moral nature of man we mean those powers which fit him for right or
wrong action. These powers are intellect, sensibility, and will, together
with that peculiar power of discrimination and impulsion, which we call
conscience. In order to have moral action, man has intellect or reason, to
discern the difference between right and wrong; sensibility, to be moved
by each of these; free will, to do the one or the other. Intellect,
sensibility, and will, are man’s three faculties. But in connection with
these faculties there is a sort of activity which involves them all, and
without which there can be no moral action, namely, the activity of
conscience. Conscience applies the moral law to particular cases in our
personal experience, and proclaims that law as binding upon us. Only a
rational and sentient being can be truly moral; yet it does not come
within our province to treat of man’s intellect or sensibility in general.
We speak here only of Conscience and of Will.

1. Conscience.

A. Conscience an accompanying knowledge.—As already intimated, conscience
is not a separate faculty, like intellect, sensibility, and will, but
rather a mode in which these faculties act. Like consciousness, conscience
is an accompanying knowledge. Conscience is a knowing of self (including
our acts and states) in connection with a moral standard, or law. Adding
now the element of feeling, we may say that conscience is man’s
consciousness of his own moral relations, together with a peculiar feeling
in view of them. It thus involves the combined action of the intellect and
of the sensibility, and that in view of a certain class of objects, viz.:
right and wrong.

There is no separate ethical faculty any more than there is a
separate æsthetic faculty. Conscience is like taste: it has to do
with moral being and relations, as taste has to do with æsthetic
being and relations. But the ethical judgment and impulse are,
like the æsthetic judgment and impulse, the mode in which
intellect, sensibility and will act with reference to a certain
class of objects. Conscience deals with the right, as taste deals
with the beautiful. As consciousness (_con_ and _scio_) is a
con-knowing, a knowing of our thoughts, desires and volitions in
connection with a knowing of the self that has these thoughts,
desires and volitions; so conscience is a con-knowing, a knowing
of our moral acts and states in connection with a knowing of some
moral standard or law which is conceived of as our true self, and
therefore as having authority over us. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind,
183-185—“The condemnation of self involves self-diremption, double
consciousness. Without it Kant’s categorical imperative is
impossible. The one self lays down the law to the other self,
judges it, threatens it. This is what is meant, when the apostle
says: ‘_It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me_’
(_Rom. 7:17_).”

B. Conscience discriminative and impulsive.—But we need to define more
narrowly both the intellectual and the emotional elements in conscience.
As respects the intellectual element, we may say that conscience is a
power of judgment,—it declares our acts or states to conform, or not to
conform, to law; it declares the acts or states which conform to be
obligatory,—those which do not conform, to be forbidden. In other words,
conscience judges: (1) This is right (or, wrong); (2) I ought (or, I ought
not). In connection with this latter judgment, there comes into view the
emotional element of conscience,—we feel the claim of duty; there is an
inner sense that the wrong must not be done. Thus conscience is (1)
discriminative, and (2) impulsive.

Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 173—“The one
distinctive function of conscience is that of authoritative
self-judgments in the conscious presence of a supreme Personality
to whom we as persons feel ourselves accountable. It is this
twofold personal element in every judgment of conscience, _viz._,
the conscious self-judgment in the presence of the all-judging
Deity, which has led such writers as Bain and Spencer and Stephen
to attempt the explanation of the origin and authority of
conscience as the product of parental training and social
environment.... Conscience is not prudential nor advisory nor
executive, but solely judicial. Conscience is the moral reason,
pronouncing upon moral actions. Consciousness furnishes law;
conscience pronounces judgments; it says: Thou shalt, Thou shalt
not. Every man must obey his conscience; if it is not enlightened,
that is his look-out. The callousing of conscience in this life is
already a penal infliction.” S. S. Times, Apl. 5, 1902:185—“Doing
as well as we know how is not enough, unless we know just what is
right and then do that. God never tells us merely to do our best,
or according to our knowledge. It is our duty to know what is
right, and then to do it. Ignorantia legis neminem excusat. We
have responsibility for knowing preliminary to doing.”

C. Conscience distinguished from other mental processes.—The nature and
office of conscience will be still more clearly perceived if we
distinguish it from other processes and operations with which it is too
often confounded. The term conscience has been used by various writers to
designate either one or all of the following: 1. _Moral intuition_—the
intuitive perception of the difference between right and wrong, as
opposite moral categories. 2. _Accepted law_—the application of the
intuitive idea to general classes of actions, and the declaration that
these classes of actions are right or wrong, apart from our individual
relation to them. This accepted law is the complex product of (_a_) the
intuitive idea, (_b_) the logical intelligence, (_c_) experiences of
utility, (_d_) influences of society and education, and (e) positive
divine revelation. 3. _Judgment_—applying this accepted law to individual
and concrete cases in our own experience, and pronouncing our own acts or
states either past, present, or prospective, to be right or wrong. 4.
_Command_—authoritative declaration of obligation to do the right, or
forbear the wrong, together with an impulse of the sensibility away from
the one, and toward the other. 5. _Remorse_ or _approval_—moral sentiments
either of approbation or disapprobation, in view of past acts or states,
regarded as wrong or right. 6. _Fear_ or _hope_—instinctive disposition of
disobedience to expect punishment, and of obedience to expect reward.

Ladd, Philos. of Conduct, 70—“The feeling of the ought is primary,
essential, unique; the judgments as to what one ought are the
results of environment, education and reflection.” The sentiment
of justice is not an inheritance of civilized man alone. No Indian
was ever robbed of his lands or had his government allowance
stolen from him who was not as keenly conscious of the wrong as in
like circumstances we could conceive that a philosopher would be.
The _oughtness_ of the ought is certainly intuitive; the _whyness_
of the ought (conformity to God) is possibly intuitive also; the
_whatness_ of the ought is less certainly intuitive. Cutler,
Beginnings of Ethics, 163, 164—“Intuition tells us _that_ we are
obliged; _why_ we are obliged, and _what_ we are obliged to, we
must learn elsewhere.” _Obligation_—that which is binding on a
man; _ought_ is something owed; _duty_ is something due. The
intuitive notion of duty (intellect) is matched by the sense of
obligation (feeling).

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 203, 270—“All men have a sense of
right,—of right to life, and contemporaneously perhaps, but
certainly afterwards, of right to personal property. And my right
implies duty in my neighbor to respect it. Then the sense of right
becomes objective and impersonal. My neighbor’s duty to me implies
my duty to him. I put myself in his place.” Bowne, Principles of
Ethics, 156, 188—“First, the feeling of obligation, the idea of a
right and a wrong with corresponding duties, is universal....
Secondly, there is a very general agreement in the formal
principles of action, and largely in the virtues also, such as
benevolence, justice, gratitude.... Whether we owe anything to our
neighbor has never been a real question. The practical trouble has
always lain in the other question: Who is my neighbor? Thirdly,
the specific contents of the moral ideal are not fixed, but the
direction in which the ideal lies is generally discernible.... We
have in ethics the same fact as in intellect—a potentially
infallible standard, with manifold errors in its apprehension and
application. Lucretius held that degradation and paralysis of the
moral nature result from religion. Many claim on the other hand
that without religion morals would disappear from the earth.”

Robinson, Princ. and Prac. of Morality, 173—“Fear of an omnipotent
will is very different from remorse in view of the nature of the
supreme Being whose law we have violated.” A duty is to be settled
in accordance with the standard of absolute right, not as public
sentiment would dictate. A man must be ready to do right in spite
of what everybody thinks. Just as the decisions of a judge are for
the time binding on all good citizens, so the decisions of
conscience, as relatively binding, must always be obeyed. They are
presumptively right and they are the only present guide of action.
Yet man’s present state of sin makes it quite possible that the
decisions which are relatively right may be absolutely wrong. It
is not enough to take one’s time from the watch; the watch may go
wrong; there is a prior duty of regulating the watch by
astronomical standards. Bishop Gore: “Man’s first duty is, not to
_follow_ his conscience, but to _enlighten_ his conscience.”
Lowell says that the Scythians used to eat their grandfathers out
of humanity. Paine, Ethnic Trinities, 300—“Nothing is so stubborn
or so fanatical as a wrongly instructed conscience, as Paul showed
in his own case by his own confession” (_Acts 26:9_—“_I verily
thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the
name of Jesus of Nazareth_”).

D. Conscience the moral judiciary of the soul.—From what has been
previously said, it is evident that only 3. and 4. are properly included
under the term conscience. Conscience is the moral judiciary of the
soul—the power within of judgment and command. Conscience must judge
according to the law given to it, and therefore, since the moral standard
accepted by the reason may be imperfect, its decisions, while relatively
just, may be absolutely unjust.—1. and 2. belong to the _moral reason_,
but not to conscience proper. Hence the duty of enlightening and
cultivating the moral reason, so that conscience may have a proper
standard of judgment.—5. and 6. belong to the sphere of _moral sentiment_,
and not to conscience proper. The office of conscience is to “bear
witness” (Rom. 2:15).

In _Rom. 2:15_—“_they show the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their
thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them_”—we have
conscience clearly distinguished both from the law and the
perception of law on the one hand, and from the moral sentiments
of approbation and disapprobation on the other. Conscience does
not furnish the law, but it bears witness with the law which is
furnished by other sources. It is not “that power of mind by which
moral law is discovered to each individual” (Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 77), nor can we speak of “Conscience, the Law” (as
Whewell does in his Elements of Morality, 1:259-266). Conscience
is not the law-book, in the court room, but it is the judge,—whose
business is, not to make law, but to decide cases according to the
law given to him.

As conscience is not legislative, so it is not retributive; as it
is not the law-book, so it is not the sheriff. We say, indeed, in
popular language, that conscience scourges or chastises, but it is
only in the sense in which we say that the judge punishes,—_i.
e._, through the sheriff. The moral sentiments are the
sheriff,—they carry out the decisions of conscience, the judge;
but they are not themselves conscience, any more than the sheriff
is the judge.

Only this doctrine, that conscience does not discover law, can
explain on the one hand the fact that men are bound to follow
their consciences, and on the other hand the fact that their
consciences so greatly differ as to what is right or wrong in
particular cases. The truth is, that conscience is uniform and
infallible, in the sense that it always decides rightly according
to the law given it. Men’s decisions vary, only because the moral
reason has presented to the conscience different standards by
which to judge.

Conscience can be educated only in the sense of acquiring greater
facility and quickness in making its decisions. Education has its
chief effect, not upon the conscience, but upon the moral reason,
in rectifying its erroneous, or imperfect standards of judgment.
Give conscience a right law by which to judge, and its decisions
will be uniform, and absolutely as well as relatively just. We are
bound, not only to “follow our conscience,” but to have a right
conscience to follow,—and to follow it, not as one follows the
beast he drives, but as the soldier follows his commander. Robert
J. Burdette: “Following conscience as a guide is like following
one’s nose. It is important to get the nose pointed right before
it is safe to follow it. A man can keep the approval of his own
conscience in very much the same way that he can keep directly
behind his nose, and go wrong all the time.”

Conscience is the con-knowing of a particular act or state, as
coming under the law accepted by the reason as to right and wrong;
and the judgment of conscience subsumes this act or state under
that general standard. Conscience cannot _include_ the law—cannot
itself _be_ the law,—because reason only knows, never _con_-knows.
Reason says _scio_; only judgment says _conscio_.

This view enables us to reconcile the intuitional and the
empirical theories of morals. Each has its element of truth. The
original sense of right and wrong is intuitive,—no education could
ever impart the idea of the difference between right and wrong to
one who had it not. But what classes of things _are_ right or
wrong, we learn by the exercise of our logical intelligence, in
connection with experiences of utility, influences of society and
tradition, and positive divine revelation. Thus our moral reason,
through a combination of intuition and education, of internal and
external information as to general principles of right and wrong,
furnishes the standard according to which conscience may judge the
particular cases which come before it.

This moral reason may become depraved by sin, so that the light
becomes darkness (_Mat. 6:22, 23_) and conscience has only a
perverse standard by which to judge. The “_weak_” conscience (_1
Cor. 8:12_) is one whose standard of judgment is yet imperfect;
the conscience “_branded_” (Rev. Vers.) or “_seared_” (A. V.) “_as
with a hot iron_” (_1 Tim. 4:2_) is one whose standard has been
wholly perverted by practical disobedience. The word and the
Spirit of God are the chief agencies in rectifying our standards
of judgment, and so of enabling conscience to make absolutely
right decisions. God can so unite the soul to Christ, that it
becomes partaker on the one hand of his satisfaction to justice
and is thus “_sprinkled from an evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_),
and on the other hand of his sanctifying power and is thus enabled
in certain respects to obey God’s command and to speak of a “_good
conscience_” (_1 Pet. 3:16_—of single act; _3:21_—of state)
instead of an “_evil conscience_” (_Heb. 10:22_) or a conscience
“_defiled_” (_Tit. 1:15_) by sin. Here the “_good conscience_” is
the conscience which has been obeyed by the will, and the “_evil
conscience_” the conscience which has been disobeyed; with the
result, in the first case, of approval from the moral sentiments,
and, in the second case, of disapproval.

E. Conscience in its relation to God as law-giver.—Since conscience, in
the proper sense, gives uniform and infallible judgment that the right is
supremely obligatory, and that the wrong must be forborne at every cost,
it can be called an echo of God’s voice, and an indication in man of that
which his own true being requires.

Conscience has sometimes been described as the voice of God in the
soul, or as the personal presence and influence of God himself.
But we must not identify conscience with God. D. W. Faunce:
“Conscience is not God,—it is only a part of one’s self. To build
up a religion about one’s own conscience, as if it were God, is
only a refined selfishness—a worship of one part of one’s self by
another part of one’s self.” In The Excursion, Wordsworth speaks
of conscience as “God’s most intimate presence in the soul And his
most perfect image in the world.” But in his Ode to Duty he more
discreetly writes: “Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if
that name thou love, Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the
erring, and reprove, Thou who art victory and law When empty
terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free And calmst
the weary strife of frail humanity!” Here is an allusion to the
Hebrew Bath Kol. “The Jews say that the Holy Spirit spoke during
the Tabernacle by Urim and Thummim, under the first Temple by the
Prophets, and under the second Temple by the Bath Kol—a divine
intimation as inferior to the oracular voice proceeding from the
mercy seat as a daughter is supposed to be inferior to her mother.
It is also used in the sense of an approving conscience. In this
case it is the echo of the voice of God in those who by obeying
hear” (Hershon’s Talmudic Miscellany, 2, note). This phrase, “the
echo of God’s voice,” is a correct description of conscience, and
Wordsworth probably had it in mind when he spoke of duty as “the
daughter of the voice of God.” Robert Browning describes
conscience as “the great beacon-light God sets in all.... The
worst man upon earth ... knows in his conscience more Of what
right is, than arrives at birth In the best man’s acts that we bow
before.” Jackson, James Martineau, 154—The sense of obligation is
“a piercing ray of the great Orb of souls.” On Wordsworth’s
conception of conscience, see A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 365-368.

Since the activity of the immanent God reveals itself in the
normal operations of our own faculties, conscience might be also
regarded as man’s true self over against the false self which we
have set up against it. Theodore Parker defines conscience as “our
consciousness of the conscience of God.” In his fourth year, says
Chadwick, his biographer (pages 12, 13, 185), young Theodore saw a
little spotted tortoise and lifted his hand to strike. All at once
something checked his arm, and a voice within said clear and loud:
“It is wrong.” He asked his mother what it was that told him it
was wrong. She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron, and
taking him in her arms said: “Some men call it conscience, but I
prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you
listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and
will always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear and
disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and will leave
you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on your
hearing this little voice.” R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man
and of God, 87, 171—“Man has conscience, as he has talents.
Conscience, no more than talent, makes him good. He is good, only
as he follows conscience and uses talent.... The relation between
the terms consciousness and conscience, which are in fact but
forms of the same word, testifies to the fact that it is in the
action of conscience that man’s consciousness of himself is
chiefly experienced.”

The conscience of the regenerate man may have such right
standards, and its decisions may be followed by such uniformly
right action, that its voice, though it is not itself God’s voice,
is yet the very echo of God’s voice. The renewed conscience may
take up into itself, and may express, the witness of the Holy
Spirit (_Rom. 9:1_—“_I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my
conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit_”; _cf._
_8:16_—“_the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that
we are children of God_”). But even when conscience judges
according to imperfect standards, and is imperfectly obeyed by the
will, there is a spontaneity in its utterances and a sovereignty
in its commands. It declares that whatever is right must be done.
The imperative of conscience is a “categorical imperative” (Kant).
It is independent of the human will. Even when disobeyed, it still
asserts its authority. Before conscience, every other impulse and
affection of man’s nature is called to bow.

F. Conscience in its relation to God as holy.—Conscience is not an
original authority. It points to something higher than itself. The
“authority of conscience” is simply the authority of the moral law, or
rather, the authority of the personal God, of whose nature the law is but
a transcript. Conscience, therefore, with its continual and supreme demand
that the right should be done, furnishes the best witness to man of the
existence of a personal God, and of the supremacy of holiness in him in
whose image we are made.

In knowing self in connection with moral law, man not only gets
his best knowledge of self, but his best knowledge of that other
self opposite to him, namely, God. Gordon, Christ of To-day,
236—“The conscience is the true Jacob’s ladder, set in the heart
of the individual and reaching unto heaven; and upon it the angels
of self-reproach and self-approval ascend and descend.” This is of
course true if we confine our thoughts to the mandatory element in
revelation. There is a higher knowledge of God which is given only
in grace. Jacob’s ladder symbolizes the Christ who publishes not
only the gospel but the law, and not only the law but the gospel.
Dewey, Psychology, 344—“Conscience is intuitive, not in the sense
that it enunciates universal laws and principles, for it lays down
no laws. Conscience is a name for the experience of personality
that any given act is in harmony or in discord with a truly
realized personality.” Because obedience to the dictates of
conscience is always relatively right, Kant could say that “an
erring conscience is a chimæra.” But because the law accepted by
conscience may be absolutely wrong, conscience may in its
decisions greatly err from the truth. S. S. Times: “Saul before
his conversion was a conscientious wrong doer. His spirit and
character was commendable, while his conduct was reprehensible.”
We prefer to say that Saul’s zeal for the law was a zeal to make
the law subservient to his own pride and honor.

Horace Bushnell said that the first requirement of a great
ministry is a great conscience. He did not mean the punitive,
inhibitory conscience merely, but rather the discovering,
arousing, inspiring conscience, that sees at once the great things
to be done, and moves toward them with a shout and a song. This
unbiased and pure conscience is inseparable from the sense of its
relation to God and to God’s holiness. Shakespeare, Henry VI, 2d
Part, 3:2—“What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked,
though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is
corrupted.” Huxley, in his lecture at Oxford in 1893, admits and
even insists that ethical practice must be and should be in
opposition to evolution; that the methods of evolution do not
account for ethical man and his ethical progress. Morality is not
a product of the same methods by which lower orders have advanced
in perfection of organization, namely, by the struggle for
existence and survival of the fittest. Human progress is moral, is
in freedom, is under the law of love, is different in kind from
physical evolution. James Russell Lowell: “In vain we call old
notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing: The ten
commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.”

R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 161—“Conscience
lives in human nature like a rightful king, whose claim can never
be forgotten by his people, even though they dethrone and misuse
him, and whose presence on the seat of judgment can alone make the
nation to be at peace with itself.” Seth, Ethical Principles,
424—“The Kantian theory of autonomy does not tell the whole story
of the moral life. Its unyielding Ought, its categorical
Imperative, issues not merely from the depths of our own nature,
but from the heart of the universe itself. We are
self-legislative; but we reënact the law already enacted by God;
we recognize, rather than constitute, the law of our own being.
The moral law is an echo, within our own souls, of the voice of
the Eternal, _‘__whose offspring we are__’__ (Acts 17:28)_.”

Schenkel, Christliche Dogmatik, 1:135-155—“The conscience is the
organ by which the human spirit finds God in itself and so becomes
aware of itself in him. Only in conscience is man conscious of
himself as eternal, as distinct from God, yet as normally bound to
be determined wholly by God. When we subject ourselves wholly to
God, conscience gives us peace. When we surrender to the world the
allegiance due only to God, conscience brings remorse. In this
latter case we become aware that while God is in us, we are no
longer in God. Religion is exchanged for ethics, the relation of
communion for the relation of separation. In conscience alone man
distinguishes himself absolutely from the brute. Man does not make
conscience, but conscience makes man. Conscience feels every
separation from God as an injury to self. Faith is the relating of
the self-consciousness to the God-consciousness, the becoming sure
of our own personality, in the absolute personality of God. Only
in faith does conscience come to itself. But by sin this
faith-consciousness may be turned into law-consciousness. Faith
affirms God _in_ us; Law affirms God _outside_ of us.” Schenkel
differs from Schleiermacher in holding that religion is not
feeling but conscience, and that it is not a sense of dependence
on the world, but a sense of dependence on God. Conscience
recognizes a God distinct from the universe, a moral God, and so
makes an unmoral religion impossible.

Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 283-285, Moral Science, 49, Law of
Love, 41—“Conscience is the moral consciousness of man in view of
his own actions as related to moral law. It is a double knowledge
of self and of the law. Conscience is not the whole of the moral
nature. It presupposes the moral reason, which recognizes the
moral law and affirms its universal obligation for all moral
beings. It is the office of conscience to bring man into personal
relation to this law. It sets up a tribunal within him by which
his own actions are judged. Not conscience, but the moral reason,
judges of the conduct of others. This last is _science_, but not
_conscience_.”

Peabody, Moral Philos., 41-60—“Conscience not a source, but a
means, of knowledge. Analogous to consciousness. A judicial
faculty. Judges according to the law before it. Verdict (verum
dictum) always relatively right, although, by the absolute
standard of right, it may be wrong. Like all perceptive faculties,
educated by use (not by increase of knowledge only, for man may
act worse, the more knowledge he has). For absolutely right
decisions, conscience is dependent upon knowledge. To recognize
conscience as _legislator_ (as well as judge), is to fail to
recognize any objective standard of right.” The Two Consciences,
46, 47—“Conscience the Law, and Conscience the Witness. The latter
is the true and proper Conscience.”

H. B. Smith, System of Christ. Theology, 178-191—“The unity of
conscience is not in its being one faculty or in its performing
one function, but in its having one _object_, its relation to one
idea, viz., _right_.... The term ‘conscience’ no more designates a
special faculty than the term ‘religion’ does (or than the
‘æsthetic sense’).... The existence of conscience proves a moral
law above us; it leads logically to a Moral Governor; ... it
implies an essential distinction between right and wrong, an
immutable morality; ... yet needs to be enlightened; ... men may
be conscientious in iniquity; ... conscience is not righteousness;
... this may only show the greatness of the depravity, having
conscience, and yet ever disobeying it.”

On the New Testament passages with regard to conscience, see
Hofmann, Lehre von dem Gewissen, 30-38; Kähler, Das Gewissen,
225-293. For the view that conscience is primarily the cognitive
or intuitional power of the soul, see Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 77; Alexander, Moral Science, 20; McCosh, Div. Govt.,
297-312; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July,
1877:257-274; Park, Discourses, 260-296; Whewell, Elements of
Morality, 1:259-266. On the whole subject of conscience, see
Mansel, Metaphysics, 158-170; Martineau, Religion and Materialism,
45—“The discovery of duty is as distinctly relative to an
objective Righteousness as the perception of form to an external
space”; also Types, 2:27-30—“We first judge ourselves; then
others”; 53, 54, 74, 103—“Subjective morals are as absurd as
subjective mathematics.” The best brief treatment of the whole
subject is that of E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of
Morality, 26-78. See also Wayland, Moral Science, 49; Harless,
Christian Ethics, 45, 60; H. N. Day, Science of Ethics, 17; Janet,
Theory of Morals, 264, 348; Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 62; _cf._
Schwegler, Hist. Philosophy, 233; Haven, Mor. Philos., 41;
Fairchild, Mor. Philos., 75; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 71;
Passavant, Das Gewissen; Wm. Schmid, Das Gewissen.

2. Will.

A. Will defined.—Will is the soul’s power to choose between motives and to
direct its subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen,—in
other words, the soul’s power to choose both an end and the means to
attain it. The choice of an ultimate end we call immanent preference; the
choice of means we call executive volition.

In this definition we part company with Jonathan Edwards, Freedom
of the Will, in Works, vol. 2. He regards the will as the soul’s
power to act according to motive, _i. e._, to act out its nature,
but he denies the soul’s power to choose between motives, _i. e._,
to initiate a course of action contrary to the motive which has
been previously dominant. Hence he is unable to explain how a holy
being, like Satan or Adam, could ever fall. If man has no power to
change motives, to break with the past, to begin a new course of
action, he has no more freedom than the brute. The younger Edwards
(Works, 1:483) shows what his father’s doctrine of the will
implies, when he says: “Beasts therefore, according to the measure
of their intelligence, are as free as men. Intelligence, and not
liberty, is the only thing wanting to constitute them moral
agents.” Yet Jonathan Edwards, determinist as he was, in his
sermon on Pressing into the Kingdom of God (Works, 4:381), urges
the use of means, and appeals to the sinner as if he had the power
of choosing between the motives of self and of God. He was
unconsciously making a powerful appeal to the will, and the human
will responded in prolonged and mighty efforts; see Allen,
Jonathan Edwards, 109.

For references, and additional statements with regard to the will
and its freedom, see chapter on Decrees, pages 361, 362, and
article by A. H. Strong, in Baptist Review, 1883:219-242, and
reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 114-128. In the remarks upon
the Decrees, we have intimated our rejection of the Arminian
liberty of indifference, or the doctrine that the will can act
without motive. See this doctrine advocated in Peabody, Moral
Philosophy, 1-9. But we also reject the theory of determinism
propounded by Jonathan Edwards (Freedom of the Will, in Works,
vol. 2), which, as we have before remarked, identifies sensibility
with the will, regards affections as the efficient causes of
volitions, and speaks of the connection between motive and action
as a necessary one. Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, and The
Will, 407—“Edwards gives to the controlling cause of volition in
the past the name of motive. He treats the inclination as a
motive, but he also makes inclination synonymous with choice and
will, which would make will to be only the soul willing—and
therefore the cause of its own act.” For objections to the
Arminian theory, see H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and
Philosophy, 359-399; McCosh, Divine Government, 263-318, esp. 312;
E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 109-137;
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:115-147.

James, Psychology, 1:139—“Consciousness is primarily a selecting
agency.” 2:393—“Man possesses all the instincts of animals, and a
great many more besides. Reason, _per se_, can inhibit no
impulses; the only thing that can neutralize an impulse is an
impulse the other way. Reason may however make an inference which
will excite the imagination to let loose the impulse the other
way.” 549—“Ideal or moral action is action in the line of the
greatest resistance.” 562—“Effort of attention is the essential
phenomenon of will.” 567—“The terminus of the psychological
process is volition; the point to which the will is directly
applied is always an idea.” 568—“Though attention is the first
thing in volition, express consent to the reality of what is
attended to is an additional and distinct phenomenon. We say not
only: It is a reality; but we also say: ‘Let it be a reality.’ ”
571—“Are the duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions
of the object, or are they not? We answer, _No_, and so we
maintain freedom of the will.” 584—“The soul presents nothing,
creates nothing, is at the mercy of material forces for all
possibilities, and, by reinforcing one and checking others, it
figures not as an _epiphenomenon_, but as something from which the
play gets moral support.” Alexander, Theories of the Will,
201-214, finds in Reid’s Active Powers of the Human Mind the most
adequate empirical defense of indeterminism.

B. Will and other faculties.—(_a_) We accept the threefold division of
human faculties into intellect, sensibility, and will. (_b_) Intellect is
the soul knowing; sensibility is the soul feeling (desires, affections);
will is the soul choosing (end or means). (_c_) In every act of the soul,
all the faculties act. Knowing involves feeling and willing; feeling
involves knowing and willing; willing involves knowing and feeling. (_d_)
Logically, each latter faculty involves the preceding action of the
former; the soul must know before feeling; must know and feel before
willing. (_e_) Yet since knowing and feeling are activities, neither of
these is possible without willing.

Socrates to Theætetus: “It would be a singular thing, my lad, if
each of us was, as it were, a wooden horse, and within us were
seated many separate senses. For manifestly these senses unite
into one nature, call it the soul or what you will. And it is with
this central form, through the organs of sense, that we perceive
sensible objects.” Dewey, Psychology, 21—“Knowledge and feeling
are partial aspects of the self, and hence more or less abstract,
while will is complete, comprehending both aspects.... While the
universal element is knowledge, the individual element is feeling,
and the relation which connects them into one concrete content is
will.” 364—“There is conflict of desires or motives. Deliberation
is the comparison of desires; choice is the decision in favor of
one. This desire is then the strongest because the whole force of
the self is thrown into it.” 411—“The man determines himself by
setting up either good or evil as a motive to himself, and he sets
up either, as he will have himself be. There is no thought without
will, for thought implies inhibition.” Ribot, Diseases of the
Will, 73, cites the case of Coleridge, and his lack of power to
inhibit scattering and useless ideas; 114—“Volition plunges its
roots into the profoundest depths of the individual, and beyond
the individual, into the species and into all species.”

As God is not mere nature but originating force, so man is chiefly
will. Every other act of the soul has will as an element. Wundt:
“Jedes Denken ist ein Wollen.” There is no perception, and there
is no thought, without attention, and attention is an act of the
will. Hegelians and absolute idealists like Bradley, (see Mind,
July, 1886), deny that attention is an active function of the
self. They regard it as a necessary consequence of the more
interesting character of preceding ideas. Thus all power to alter
character is denied to the agent. This is an exact reversal of the
facts of consciousness, and it would leave no will in God or man.
T. H. Green says that the self makes the motives by identifying
itself with one solicitation of desire rather than another, but
that the self has no power of alternative choice in thus
identifying itself with one solicitation of desire rather than
another; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 310. James Seth, Freedom of
Ethical Postulate: “The only hope of finding a place for real free
will is in another than the Humian, empirical or psychological
account of the moral person or self. Hegel and Green bring will
again under the law of necessity. But personality is ultimate.
Absolute uniformity is entirely unproved. We contend for a power
of free and incalculable initiation in the self, and this it is
necessary to maintain in the interests of morality.” Without will
to attend to pertinent material and to reject the impertinent, we
can have no _science_; without will to select and combine the
elements of imagination, we can have no _art_; without will to
choose between evil and good, we can have no _morality_. Ælfric,
A. D. 900: “The verb ‘to will’ has no imperative, for that the
will must be always free.”

C. Will and permanent states.—(_a_) Though every act of the soul involves
the action of all the faculties, yet in any particular action one faculty
may be more prominent than the others. So we speak of acts of intellect,
of affection, of will. (_b_) This predominant action of any single faculty
produces effects upon the other faculties associated with it. The action
of will gives a direction to the intellect and to the affections, as well
as a permanent bent to the will itself. (_c_) Each faculty, therefore, has
its permanent states as well as its transient acts, and the will may
originate these states. Hence we speak of voluntary affections, and may
with equal propriety speak of voluntary opinions. These permanent
voluntary states we denominate character.

I “make up” my mind. Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 152—“I will the
influential ideas, feelings and desires, rather than allow these
ideas, feelings and desires to influence—not to say, determine
me.” All men can say with Robert Browning’s Paracelsus: “I have
subdued my life to the one purpose Whereto I ordained it.” “Sow an
act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character;
sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” Tito, in George Eliot’s
Romola, and Markheim in R. L. Stevenson’s story of that name, are
instances of the gradual and almost imperceptible fixation in evil
ways which results from seemingly slight original decisions of the
will; see art. on Tito Melema, by Julia H. Gulliver, in New World,
Dec. 1895:688—“Sin lies in the choice of the ideas that shall
frequent the moral life, rather than of the actions that shall
form the outward life.... The pivotal point of the moral life is
the intent involved in attention.... Sin consists, not only in the
motive, but in the making of the motive.” By every decision of the
will in which we turn our thought either toward or away from an
object of desire, we set nerve-tracts in operation, upon which
thought may hereafter more or less easily travel. “Nothing makes
an inroad, without making a road.” By slight efforts of attention
to truth which we know ought to influence us, we may “_make level
in the desert a highway for our God_” (_Is. 40:3_), or render the
soul a hard trodden ground impervious to “_the word of the
kingdom_” (_Mat. 13:19_).

The word “character” meant originally the mark of the engraver’s
tool upon the metal or the stone. It came then to signify the
collective result of the engraver’s work. The use of the word in
morals implies that every thought and act is chiseling itself into
the imperishable substance of the soul. J. S. Mill: “A character
is a completely fashioned will.” We may talk therefore of a
“generic volition” (Dewey). There is a permanent bent of the will
toward good or toward evil. Reputation is man’s shadow, sometimes
longer, sometimes shorter, than himself. Character, on the other
hand, is the man’s true self—“what a man is in the dark” (Dwight
L. Moody). In this sense, “purpose is the autograph of mind.” Duke
of Wellington: “Habit a second nature? Habit is ten times nature!”
When Macbeth says: “If ’twere done when ’tis done, Then ’twere
well ’twere done quickly,” the trouble is that when ’tis done, it
is only begun. Robert Dale Owen gives us the fundamental principle
of socialism in the maxim: “A man’s character is made for him, not
by him.” Hence he would change man’s diet or his environment, as a
means of forming man’s character. But Jesus teaches that what
defiles comes not from without but from within (_Mat. 15:18_).
Because character is the result of will, the maxim of Heraclitus
is true: ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων—man’s character is his destiny. On
habit, see James, Psychology, 1:122-127.

D. Will and motives.—(_a_) The permanent states just mentioned, when they
have been once determined, also influence the will. Internal views and
dispositions, and not simply external presentations, constitute the
strength of motives. (_b_) These motives often conflict, and though the
soul never acts without motive, it does notwithstanding choose between
motives, and so determines the end toward which it will direct its
activities. (_c_) Motives are not _causes_, which compel the will, but
_influences_, which persuade it. The power of these motives, however, is
proportioned to the strength of will which has entered into them and has
made them what they are.

“Incentives come from the soul’s self: the rest avail not.” The
same wind may drive two ships in opposite directions, according as
they set their sails. The same external presentation may result in
George Washington’s refusing, and Benedict Arnold’s accepting, the
bribe to betray his country. Richard Lovelace of Canterbury:
“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds
innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage.” Jonathan Edwards
made motives to be _efficient_ causes, when they are only _final_
causes. We must not interpret motive as if it were locomotive. It
is always a man’s fault when he becomes a drunkard: drink never
takes to a man; the man takes to drink. Men who deny demerit are
ready enough to claim merit. They hold others responsible, if not
themselves. Bowne: “Pure arbitrariness and pure necessity are
alike incompatible with reason. There must be a law of reason in
the mind with which volition cannot tamper, and there must also be
the power to determine ourselves accordingly.” Bowne, Principles
of Ethics, 135—“If necessity is a universal thing, then the belief
in freedom is also necessary. All grant freedom of thought, so
that it is only executive freedom that is denied.” Bowne, Theory
of Thought and Knowledge, 239-244—“Every system of philosophy must
invoke freedom for the solution of the problem of error, or make
shipwreck of reason itself.... Our faculties are made for truth,
but they may be carelessly used, or wilfully misused, and thus
error is born.... We need not only laws of thought, but
self-control in accordance with them.”

The will, in choosing _between_ motives, chooses _with_ a motive,
namely, the motive chosen. Fairbairn, Philos. Christian Religion,
76—“While motives may be necessary, they need not necessitate. The
will selects motives; motives do not select the will. Heredity and
environment do not cancel freedom, they only condition it. Thought
is transcendence as regards the phenomena of space; will is
transcendence as regards the phenomena of time; this double
transcendence involves the complete supernatural character of
man.” New World, 1892:152—“It is not the character, but the self
that has the character, to which the ultimate moral decision is
due.” William Ernest Henly, Poems, 119—“It matters not how strait
the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master
of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:54—“A being is free, in so far
as the inner centre of its life, from which it acts, is
conditioned by self-determination. It is not enough that the
deciding agent in an act be the man himself, his own nature, his
distinctive character. In order to have accountability, we must
have more than this; we must prove that this, his distinctive
nature and character, springs from his own volition, and that it
is itself the product of freedom in moral development. _Matt.
12:33_—‘_make the tree good, and its fruit good_’—combines both.
Acts depend upon nature; but nature again depends upon the primary
decisions of the will (‘_make the tree good_’). Some determinism
is not denied; but it is partly limited [by the will’s remaining
power of choice] and partly traced back to a former
self-determining.” _Ibid._, 67—“If freedom be the self-determining
of the will from that which is undetermined, Determinism is found
wanting,—because in its most spiritual form, though it grants a
self-determination of the will, it is only such a one as springs
from a determinateness already present; and Indifferentism is
found wanting too, because while it maintains indeterminateness as
presupposed in every act of will, it does not recognize an actual
self-determining on the part of the will, which, though it be a
self-determining, yet begets determinateness of character.... We
must, therefore, hold the doctrine of a _conditional_ and
_limited_ freedom.”

E. Will and contrary choice.—(_a_) Though no act of pure will is possible,
the soul may put forth single volitions in a direction opposed to its
previous ruling purpose, and thus far man has the power of a contrary
choice (Rom. 7:18—“to will is present with me”). (_b_) But in so far as
will has entered into and revealed itself in permanent states of intellect
and sensibility and in a settled bent of the will itself, man cannot by a
single act reverse his moral state, and in this respect has not the power
of a contrary choice. (_c_) In this latter case he can change his
character only indirectly, by turning his attention to considerations
fitted to awaken opposite dispositions, and by thus summoning up motives
to an opposite course.

There is no such thing as an act of pure will. Peters,
Willenswelt, 126—“Jedes Wollen ist ein Etwas wollen”—“all willing
is a willing of some thing”; it has an object which the mind
conceives, which awakens the sensibility, and which the will
strives to realize. Cause without alternative is not true cause.
J. F. Watts: “We know causality only as we know will, _i. e._,
where of two possibles it makes one actual. A cause may therefore
have more than one certain effect. In the external material world
we cannot find _cause_, but only _antecedent_. To construct a
theory of the will from a study of the material universe is to
seek the living among the dead. Will is power to _make_ a
decision, not to _be made_ by decisions, to decide between
motives, and not to be determined by motives. Who conducts the
trial between motives? Only the self.” While we agree with the
above in its assertion of the certainty of nature’s sequences, we
object to its attribution even to nature of anything like
necessity. Since nature’s laws are merely the habits of God, God’s
causality in nature is the regularity, not of necessity, but of
freedom. We too are free at the strategic points. Automatic as
most of our action is, there are times when we know ourselves to
have power of initiative; when we put under our feet the motives
which have dominated us in the past; when we mark out new courses
of action. In these critical times we assert our manhood; but for
them we would be no better than the beasts that perish. “Unless
above himself he can erect himself, How mean a thing is man!”

Will, with no remaining power of contrary choice, may be brute
will, but it is not free will. We therefore deny the relevancy of
Herbert Spencer’s argument, in his Data of Ethics, and in his
Psychology, 2:503—“Psychical changes either conform to law, or
they do not. If they do not conform to law, no science of
Psychology is possible. If they do conform to law, there cannot be
any such thing as free will.” Spinoza also, in his Ethics, holds
that the stone, as it falls, would if it were conscious think
itself free, and with as much justice as man; for it is doing that
to which its constitution leads it; but no more can be said for
him. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, xiii—“To try to
collect the ‘data of ethics’ when there is no recognition of man
as a personal agent, capable of freely originating the conduct and
the states of will for which he is morally responsible, is labor
lost.” Fisher, chapter on the Personality of God, in Grounds of
Theistic and Christian Belief—“Self-determination, as the very
term signifies, is attended with an irresistible conviction that
the direction of the will is self-imparted.... That the will is
free, that is, not constrained by causes exterior, which is
_fatalism_—and not a mere spontaneity, confined to one path by a
force acting from within, which is _determinism_—is immediately
evident to every unsophisticated mind. We can initiate action by
an efficiency which is neither irresistibly controlled by motives,
nor determined, without any capacity of alternative action, by a
proneness inherent in its nature.... Motives have an _influence_,
but influence is not to be confounded with _causal_ efficiency.”

Talbot, on Will and Free Will, Bap. Rev., July, 1882—“Will is
neither a power of unconditioned self-determination—which is not
freedom, but an aimless, irrational, fatalistic power; nor pure
spontaneity—which excludes from will all law but its own; but it
is rather a power of originating action—a power which is limited
however by inborn dispositions, by acquired habits and
convictions, by feelings and social relations.” Ernest Naville, in
Rev. Chrétienne, Jan. 1878:7—“Our liberty does not consist in
producing an action of which it is the only source. It consists in
choosing between two preëxistent impulses. It is _choice_, not
_creation_, that is our destiny—a drop of water that can choose
whether it will go into the Rhine or the Rhone. Gravity carries it
down,—it chooses only its direction. Impulses do not come from the
will, but from the sensibility; but free will chooses between
these impulses.” Bowne, Metaphysics, 169—“Freedom is not a power
of acting without, or apart from, motives, but simply a power of
choosing an end or law, and of governing one’s self accordingly.”
Porter, Moral Science, 77-111—Will is “not a power to choose
without motive.” It “does not exclude motives to the contrary.”
Volition “supposes two or more objects between which election is
made. It is an act of preference, and to prefer implies that one
motive is chosen to the exclusion of another.... To the conception
and the act two motives at least are required.” Lyall, Intellect,
Emotions, and Moral Nature, 581, 592—“The will follows reasons,
inducements—but it is not _caused_. It obeys or acts under
inducement, but it does so sovereignly. It exhibits the phenomena
of activity, in relation to the very motive it obeys. It obeys it,
rather than another. It determines, in reference to it, that this
is the very motive it will obey. There is undoubtedly this
phenomenon exhibited: the will obeying—but elective, active, in
its obedience. If it be asked how this is possible—how the will
can be under the influence of motive, and yet possess an
intellectual activity—we reply that this is one of those ultimate
phenomena which must be admitted, while they cannot be explained.”

F. Will and responsibility.—(_a_) By repeated acts of will put forth in a
given moral direction, the affections may become so confirmed in evil or
in good as to make previously certain, though not necessary, the future
good or evil action of the man. Thus, while the will is free, the man may
be the “bondservant of sin” (John 8:31-36) or the “servant of
righteousness” (Rom. 6:15-23; _cf._ Heb. 12-23—“spirits of just men made
perfect”). (_b_) Man is responsible for all effects of will, as well as
for will itself; for voluntary affections, as well as for voluntary acts;
for the intellectual views into which will has entered, as well as for the
acts of will by which these views have been formed in the past or are
maintained in the present (2 Pet. 3:5—“wilfully forget”).

Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 415—“The self stands between the
two laws of Nature and of Conscience, and, under perpetual
limitations from both, exercises its choice. Thus it becomes more
and more enslaved by the one, or more and more free by habitually
choosing to follow the other. Our conception of causality
according to the laws of nature, and our conception of the other
causality of freedom, are both derived from one and the same
experience of the self. There arises a seeming antinomy only when
we hypostatize each severally and apart from the other.” R. T.
Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 69—“Making a _will_ is
significant. Here the action of will is limited by conditions: the
amount of the testator’s property, the number of his relatives,
the nature of the objects of bounty within his knowledge.”

Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 349-407—“Action without motives,
or contrary to all motives, would be irrational action. Instead of
being free, it would be like the convulsions of epilepsy. Motives
= sensibilities. Motive is not _cause_; does not determine; is
only influence. Yet determination is always made under the
influence of motives. Uniformity of action is not to be explained
by any law of uniform influence of motives, but by _character_ in
the will. By its choice, will forms in itself a character; by
action in accordance with this choice, it confirms and develops
the character. Choice modifies sensibilities, and so modifies
motives. Volitional action expresses character, but also forms and
modifies it. Man may change his choice; yet intellect,
sensibility, motive, habit, remain. Evil choice, having formed
intellect and sensibility into accord with itself, must be a
powerful hindrance to fundamental change by new and contrary
choice; and gives small ground to expect that man left to himself
ever will make the change. After will has acquired character by
choices, its determinations are not transitions from complete
indeterminateness or indifference, but are more or less
expressions of character already formed. The theory that
indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never
acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic; that every
act is disintegrated from every other; that character, if
acquired, would be incompatible with freedom. Character is a
choice, yet a choice which persists, which modifies sensibility
and intellect, and which influences subsequent determinations.”

My freedom then is freedom within limitations. Heredity and
environment, and above all the settled dispositions which are the
product of past acts of will, render a large part of human action
practically automatic. The deterministic theory is valid for
perhaps nine-tenths of human activity. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
118, 119—“We naturally will with a bias toward evil. To act
according to the perfection of nature would be true freedom. And
this man has lost. He recognizes that he is not his true self. It
is only with difficulty that he works toward his true self again.
By the fall of Adam, the will, which before was conditioned but
free, is now not only conditioned but enslaved. Nothing but the
action of grace can free it.” Tennyson, In Memoriam, Introduction:
“Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make
them thine.” Studying the action of the sinful will alone, one
might conclude that there is no such thing as freedom. Christian
ethics, in distinction from naturalistic ethics, reveals most
clearly the degradation of our nature, at the same time that it
discloses the remedy in Christ: “_If therefore the Son shall make
you free, ye shall be free indeed_” (_John 8:36_).

Mind, Oct. 1882:567—“Kant seems to be in quest of the phantasmal
freedom which is supposed to consist in the absence of
determination by motives. The error of the determinists from which
this idea is the recoil, involves an equal abstraction of the man
from his thoughts, and interprets the relation between the two as
an instance of the mechanical causality which exists between two
things in nature. The point to be grasped in the controversy is
that a man and his motives are one, and that consequently he is in
every instance self-determined.... Indeterminism is tenable only
if an ego can be found which is not an ego already determinate;
but such an ego, though it may be logically distinguished and
verbally expressed, is not a factor in psychology.” Morell, Mental
Philosophy, 390—“Motives determine the will, and so _far_ the will
is not free; but the man governs the motives, allowing them a less
or a greater power of influencing his life, and so _far_ the man
is a free agent.” Santayana: “A free man, because he is free, may
make himself a slave; but once a slave, because he is a slave, he
cannot make himself free.” Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, 51,
65—“This almost overwhelming cumulative proof [of necessity]
seems, however, more than balanced by a single argument on the
other side: the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the
moment of deliberate volition. It is impossible for me to think,
at each moment, that my volition is completely determined by my
formed character and the motives acting upon it. The opposite
conviction is so strong as to be absolutely unshaken by the
evidence brought against it. I cannot believe it to be illusory.”

G. Inferences from this view of the will.—(_a_) We can be responsible for
the voluntary evil affections with which we are born, and for the will’s
inherited preference of selfishness, only upon the hypothesis that we
originated these states of the affections and will, or had a part in
originating them. Scripture furnishes this explanation, in its doctrine of
Original Sin, or the doctrine of a common apostasy of the race in its
first father, and our derivation of a corrupted nature by natural
generation from him. (_b_) While there remains to man, even in his present
condition, a natural power of will by which he may put forth transient
volitions externally conformed to the divine law and so may to a limited
extent modify his character, it still remains true that the sinful bent of
his affections is not directly under his control; and this bent
constitutes a motive to evil so constant, inveterate, and powerful, that
it actually influences every member of the race to reäffirm his evil
choice, and renders necessary a special working of God’s Spirit upon his
heart to ensure his salvation. Hence the Scripture doctrine of
Regeneration.

There is such a thing as “psychical automatism” (Ladd, Philos.
Mind, 169). Mother: “Oscar, why can’t you be good?” “Mamma, it
makes me so tired!” The wayward four-year-old is a type of
universal humanity. Men are born morally tired, though they have
energy enough of other sorts. The man who sins may lose all
freedom, so that his soul becomes a seething mass of eructant
evil. T. C. Chamberlain: “Conditions may make choices run rigidly
in one direction and give as fixed uniformity as in physical
phenomena. Put before a million typical Americans the choice
between a quarter and a dime, and rigid uniformity of results can
be safely predicted.” Yet Dr. Chamberlain not only grants but
claims liberty of choice. Romanes, Mind and Motion,
155-160—“Though volitions are largely determined by other and
external causes, it does not follow that they are determined
_necessarily_, and this makes all the difference between the
theories of will as bond or free. Their intrinsic character as
first causes protects them from being coerced by these causes and
therefore from becoming only the mere effects of them. The
condition to the effective operation of a _motive_—as
distinguished from a _motor_—is the acquiescence of the first
cause upon whom that motive is operating.” Fichte: “If any one
adopting the dogma of necessity should remain virtuous, we must
seek the cause of his goodness elsewhere than in the innocuousness
of his doctrine. Upon the supposition of free will alone can duty,
virtue, and morality have any existence.” Lessing: “Kein Mensch
muss müssen.” Delitzsch: “Der Mensch, wie er jetzt ist, ist
wahlfrei, aber nicht machtfrei.”

Kant regarded freedom as an exception to the law of natural
causality. But this freedom is not phenomenal but noumenal, for
causality is not a category of noumena. From this freedom we get
our whole idea of personality, for personality is freedom of the
whole soul from the mechanism of nature. Kant treated scornfully
the determinism of Leibnitz. He said it was the freedom of a
turnspit, which when once wound up directed its own movements, _i.
e._, was merely automatic. Compare with this the view of Baldwin,
Psychology, Feeling and Will, 373—“Free choice is a synthesis, the
outcome of which is in every case conditioned upon its elements,
but in no case caused by them. A logical inference is conditioned
upon its premises, but it is not caused by them. Both inference
and choice express the nature of the conscious principle and the
unique method of its life.... The motives do not grow into
volitions, nor does the volition stand apart from the motives. The
motives are partial expressions, the volition is a total
expression, of the same existence.... Freedom is the expression of
one’s self conditioned by past choices and present environment.”
Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Refrain to-night, And that shall lend a
kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy: For
use can almost change the stamp of nature, And either curb the
devil or throw him out With wondrous potency.” 3:2—“Purpose is but
the slave to memory; Of violent birth but poor validity.”
4:7—“That we would do, We should do when we would; for this
_would_ changes And hath abatements and delays as many As there
are tongues, are hands, are accidents.” Goethe: “Von der Gewalt
die alle Wesen bindet, Befreit der Mensch sich der sich
überwindet.”

Scotus Novanticus (Prof. Laurie of Edinburgh), Ethica, 287—“The
chief good is fulness of life achieved through law by the action
of will as reason on sensibility.... Immorality is the letting
loose of feeling, in opposition to the idea and the law in it; it
is individuality in opposition to personality.... In immorality,
will is defeated, the personality overcome, and the subject
volitionizes just as a dog volitionizes. The subject takes
possession of the personality and uses it for its natural
desires.” Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, 456, quotes Ribot,
Diseases of the Will, 133—“Will is not the cause of anything. It
is like the verdict of a jury, which is an effect, without being a
cause. It is the highest force which nature has yet developed—the
last consummate blossom of all her marvellous works.” Yet Maudsley
argues that the mind itself has power to prevent insanity. This
implies that there is an owner of the instrument endowed with
power and responsibility to keep it in order. Man can do much, but
God can do more.

H. Special objections to the deterministic theory of the will.—Determinism
holds that man’s actions are uniformly determined by motives acting upon
his character, and that he has no power to change these motives or to act
contrary to them. This denial that the will is free has serious and
pernicious consequences in theology. On the one hand, it weakens even if
it does not destroy man’s conviction with regard to responsibility, sin,
guilt and retribution, and so obscures the need of atonement; on the other
hand, it weakens if it does not destroy man’s faith in his own power as
well as in God’s power of initiating action, and so obscures the
possibility of atonement.

Determinism is exemplified in Omar Kháyyám’s Rubáiyát: “With
earth’s first clay they did the last man knead, And there of the
last harvest sowed the seed; And the first morning of creation
wrote What the last dawn of reckoning shall read.” William James,
Will to Believe, 145-183, shows that determinism involves
pessimism or subjectivism—good and evil are merely means of
increasing knowledge. The result of subjectivism is in theology
antinomianism; in literature romanticism; in practical life
sensuality or sensualism, as in Rousseau, Renan and Zola. Hutton,
review of Clifford in Contemp. Thoughts and Thinkers, 1:254—“The
determinist says there would be no moral quality in actions that
did not express previous tendency, _i. e._, a man is responsible
only for what he cannot help doing. No effort against the grain
will be made by him who believes that his interior mechanism
settles for him whether he shall make it or no.” Royce, World and
Individual, 2:342—“Your unique voices in the divine symphony are
no more the voices of moral agents than are the stones of a
mosaic.” The French monarch announced that all his subjects should
be free to choose their own religion, but he added that nobody
should choose a different religion from the king’s. “Johnny, did
you give your little sister the choice between those two apples?”
“Yes, Mamma; I told her she could have the little one or none, and
she chose the little one.” Hobson’s choice was always the choice
of the last horse in the row. The bartender with revolver in hand
met all criticisms upon the quality of his liquor with the remark:
“You’ll drink that whisky, and you’ll like it too!”

Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 22—“There must be implicitly
present to primitive man the sense of freedom, since his fetichism
largely consists in attributing to inanimate objects the
spontaneity which he finds in himself.” Freedom does not
contradict conservation of energy. Professor Lodge, in Nature,
March 26, 1891—“Although expenditure of energy is needed to
increase the speed of matter, none is needed to alter its
direction.... The rails that guide a train do not propel it, nor
do they retard it; they have no essential effect upon its energy
but a guiding effect.” J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir.
Freedom, 170-203—“Will does not create force but directs it. A
very small force is able to guide the action of a great one, as in
the steering of a modern steamship.” James Seth, in Philos. Rev.,
3:285, 286—“As life is not energy but a determiner of the paths of
energy, so the will is a cause, in the sense that it controls and
directs the channels which activity shall take.” See also James
Seth, Ethical Principles, 345-388, and Freedom as Ethical
Postulate, 9—“The philosophical proof of freedom must be the
demonstration of the inadequacy of the categories of science: its
philosophical disproof must be the demonstration of the adequacy
of such scientific categories.” Shadworth Hodgson: “Either liberty
is true, and then the categories are insufficient, or the
categories are sufficient, and then liberty is a delusion.” Wagner
is the composer of determinism; there is no freedom or guilt;
action is the result of influence and environment; a mysterious
fate rules all. Life: “The views upon heredity Of scientists
remind one That, shape one’s conduct as one may, One’s future is
behind one.”

We trace willing in God back, not to motives and antecedents, but
to his infinite personality. If man is made in God’s image, why we
may not trace man’s willing also back, not to motives and
antecedents, but to his finite personality? We speak of God’s
fiat, but we may speak of man’s fiat also. Napoleon: “There shall
be no Alps!” Dutch William III: “I may fall, but shall fight every
ditch, and die in the last one!” When God energizes the will, it
becomes indomitable. _Phil. 4:13_—“_I can do all things in him
that strengtheneth me._” Dr. E. G. Robinson was theoretically a
determinist, and wrongly held that the highest conceivable freedom
is to act out one’s own nature. He regarded the will as only the
nature in movement. Will is self-determining, not in the sense
that will determines the self, but in the sense that self
determines the will. The will cannot be compelled, for unless
self-determined it is no longer will. Observation, history and
logic, he thought, lead to necessitarianism. But consciousness, he
conceded, testifies to freedom. Consciousness must be trusted,
though we cannot reconcile the two. The will is as great a mystery
as is the doctrine of the Trinity. Single volitions, he says, are
often directly in the face of the current of a man’s life. Yet he
held that we have no consciousness of the power of a contrary
choice. Consciousness can testify only to what springs out of the
moral nature, not to the moral nature itself.

Lotze, Religionsphilosophie, section 61—“An indeterminate choice
is of course incomprehensible and inexplicable, for if it were
comprehensible and explicable by the human intellect, if, that is,
it could be seen to follow necessarily from the preëxisting
conditions, it from the nature of the case could not be a morally
free choice at all.... But we cannot comprehend any more how the
mind can move the muscles, nor how a moving stone can set another
stone in motion, nor how the Absolute calls into existence our
individual selves.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 308-327, gives an
able exposé of the deterministic fallacies. He cites Martineau and
Balfour in England, Renouvier and Fonsegrive in France, Edward
Zeller, Kuno Fischer and Saarschmidt in Germany, and William James
in America, as recent advocates of free will.

Martineau, Study, 2:227—“Is there not a Causal Self, over and
above the Caused Self, or rather the Caused State and contents of
the self left as a deposit from previous behavior? Absolute
idealism, like Green’s, will not recognize the existence of this
Causal Self”; Study of Religion, 2:195-324, and especially
240—“Where two or more rival preconceptions enter the field
together, they cannot compare themselves _inter se_: they need and
meet a superior: it rests with the mind itself to decide. The
decision will not be _unmotived_, for it will have its reasons. It
will not be unconformable to the characteristics of the mind, for
it will express its preferences. But none the less is it issued by
a free cause that elects among the conditions, and is not elected
by them.” 241—“So far from admitting that different effects cannot
come from the same cause. I even venture on the paradox that
nothing is a proper cause which is limited to one effect.”
309—“Freedom, in the sense of option, and will, as the power of
deciding an alternative, have no place in the doctrines of the
German schools.” 311—“The whole illusion of Necessity springs from
the attempt to fling out, for contemplation in the field of
Nature, the creative new beginnings centered in personal subjects
that transcend it.”

See also H. B. Smith, System of Christ. Theol., 236-251; Mansel,
Proleg. Log., 113-155, 270-278, and Metaphysics, 366; Gregory,
Christian Ethics, 60; Abp. Manning, in Contem. Rev., Jan.
1871:468; Ward, Philos. of Theism, 1:287-352; 2:1-79, 274-349; Bp.
Temple, Bampton Lect., 1884:69-96; Row, Man not a Machine, in
Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 30; Richards, Lectures on Theology,
97-153; Solly, The Will, 167-203; William James, The Dilemma of
Determinism, in Unitarian Review, Sept. 1884, and in The Will to
Believe, 145-183; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 90-159;
Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 310; Bradley, in Mind, July, 1886;
Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 70-101; Illingworth,
Divine Immanence, 229-254; Ladd, Philos. of Conduct, 133-188. For
Lotze’s view of the Will, see his Philos. of Religion, 95-106, and
his Practical Philosophy, 35-50.

Chapter II. The Original State Of Man.

In determining man’s original state, we are wholly dependent upon
Scripture. This represents human nature as coming from God’s hand, and
therefore “very good” (Gen. 1:31). It moreover draws a parallel between
man’s first state and that of his restoration (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). In
interpreting these passages, however, we are to remember the twofold
danger, on the one hand of putting man so high that no progress is
conceivable, on the other hand of putting him so low that he could not
fall. We shall the more easily avoid these dangers by distinguishing
between the essentials and the incidents of man’s original state.

_Gen. 1:31_—“_And God saw everything that he had made, and,
behold, it was very good_”; _Col. 3:10_—“_the new man, that is
being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created
him_”; _Eph. 4:24_—“_the new man that after God hath been created
in righteousness and holiness of truth._”

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:337-399—“The original state must be (1)
a contrast to sin; (2) a parallel to the state of restoration.
Difficulties in the way of understanding it: (1) What lives in
regeneration is something foreign to our present nature (‘_it is
no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me_’—_Gal. 2:20_); but
the original state was something native. (2) It was a state of
childhood. We cannot fully enter into childhood, though we see it
about us, and have ourselves been through it. The original state
is yet more difficult to reproduce to reason. (3) Man’s external
circumstances and his organization have suffered great changes, so
that the present is no sign of the past. We must recur to the
Scriptures, therefore, as well-nigh our only guide.” John Caird,
Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:164-195, points out that ideal
perfection is to be looked for, not at the outset, but at the
final stage of the spiritual life. If man were wholly finite, he
would not know his finitude.

Lord Bacon: “The sparkle of the purity of man’s first estate.”
Calvin: “It was monstrous impiety that a son of the earth should
not be satisfied with being made after the similitude of God,
unless he could also be equal with him.” Prof. Hastings: “The
truly natural is not the real, but the ideal. Made in the image of
God—between that beginning and the end stands God made in the
image of man.” On the general subject of man’s original state, see
Zöckler, 3:283-290; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:215-243;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:267-276; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 374-375;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:92-116.

I. Essentials of Man’s Original State.

These are summed up in the phrase “the image of God.” In God’s image man
is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26, 27). In what did this image of
God consist? We reply that it consisted in 1. Natural likeness to God, or
personality; 2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.

_Gen. 1:26, 27_—“_And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness.... And God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created he him._” It is of great importance to
distinguish clearly between the two elements embraced in this
image of God, the natural and the moral. By virtue of the first,
man possessed certain _faculties_ (intellect, affection, will); by
virtue of the second, he had _right tendencies_ (bent, proclivity,
disposition). By virtue of the first, he was invested with certain
_powers_; by virtue of the second, a certain _direction_ was
imparted to these powers. As created in the natural image of God,
man had a moral _nature_; as created in the moral image of God,
man had a holy _character_. The first gave him _natural_ ability;
the second gave him _moral_ ability. The Greek Fathers emphasized
the first element, or _personality_; the Latin Fathers emphasized
the second element, or _holiness_. See Orr, God’s Image in Man.

As the Logos, or divine Reason, Christ Jesus, dwells in humanity
and constitutes the principle of its being, humanity shares with
Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is
completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ gains
control of their wills and they merge their life in his. To those
who accused Jesus of blasphemy, he replied by quoting the words of
_Psalm 82:6_—“_I said, Ye are gods_”—words spoken of imperfect
earthly rulers. Thus, in _John 10:34-36_, Jesus, who constitutes
the very essence of humanity, justifies his own claim to divinity
by showing that even men who represent God are also in a minor
sense “_partakers of the divine nature_” (_2 Pet. 1:4_). Hence the
many legends, in heathen religions, of the divine descent of man.
_1 Cor. 11:3_—“_the head of every man is Christ._” In every man,
even the most degraded, there is an image of God to be brought
out, as Michael Angelo saw the angel in the rough block of marble.
This natural _worth_ does not imply _worthiness_; it implies only
capacity for redemption. “The abysmal depths of personality,”
which Tennyson speaks of, are sounded, as man goes down in thought
successively from individual sins to sin of the heart and to
race-sin. But “the deeper depth is out of reach To all, O God, but
thee.” From this deeper depth, where man is rooted and grounded in
God, rise aspirations for a better life. These are not due to the
man himself, but to Christ, the immanent God, who ever works
within him. Fanny J. Crosby: “Rescue the perishing, Care for the
dying.... Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving
heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were broken will vibrate
once more.”

1. Natural likeness to God, or personality.

Man was created a personal being, and was by this personality
distinguished from the brute. By personality we mean the twofold power to
know self as related to the world and to God, and to determine self in
view of moral ends. By virtue of this personality, man could at his
creation choose which of the objects of his knowledge—self, the world, or
God—should be the norm and centre of his development. This natural
likeness to God is inalienable, and as constituting a capacity for
redemption gives value to the life even of the unregenerate (Gen. 9:6; 1
Cor. 11:7; James 3:9).

For definitions of personality, see notes on the Anthropological
Argument, page 82; on Pantheism, pages 104, 105; on the
Attributes, pages 252-254; and on the Person of Christ, in Part
VI. Here we may content ourselves with the formula: Personality =
self-consciousness + self-determination. _Self_-consciousness and
_self_-determination, as distinguished from the consciousness and
determination of the brute, involve all the higher mental and
moral powers which constitute us men. Conscience is but a mode of
their activity. Notice that the term “image” does not, in man,
imply _perfect_ representation. Only Christ is the “_very image_”
of God (_Heb. 1:3_), the “_image of the invisible God_” (_Col.
1:15_—on which see Lightfoot). Christ is the image of God
absolutely and archetypally; man, only relatively and
derivatively. But notice also that, since God is Spirit, man made
in God’s image cannot be a material thing. By virtue of his
possession of this first element of the image of God, namely,
personality, materialism is excluded.

This first element of the divine image man can never lose until he
ceases to be man. Even insanity can only obscure this natural
image,—it cannot destroy it. St. Bernard well said that it could
not be burned out, even in hell. The lost piece of money (_Luke
15:8_) still bore the image and superscription of the king, even
though it did not know it, and did not even know that it was lost.
Human nature is therefore to be reverenced, and he who destroys
human life is to be put to death: _Gen. 9:6_—“_for in the image of
God made he man_”; _1 Cor. 11:7_—“_a man indeed ought not to have
his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God_”;
_James 3:9_—even men whom we curse “_are made after the likeness
of God_”; _cf._ _Ps. 8:5_—“_thou hast made him but little lower
than God_”; _1 Pet. 2:17_—“_Honor all men._” In the being of every
man are continents which no Columbus has ever yet discovered,
depths of possible joy or sorrow which no plummet has ever yet
sounded. A whole heaven, a whole hell, may lie within the compass
of his single soul. If we could see the meanest real Christian as
he will be in the great hereafter, we should bow before him as
John bowed before the angel in the Apocalypse, for we should not
be able to distinguish him from God (_Rev. 22:8, 9_).

Sir William Hamilton: “On earth there is nothing great but man; In
man there is nothing great but mind.” We accept this dictum only
if “mind” can be understood to include man’s moral powers together
with the right direction of those powers. Shakespeare, Hamlet,
2:2—“What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”
Pascal: “Man is greater than the universe; the universe may crush
him, but it does not know that it crushes him.” Whiton, Gloria
Patri, 94—“God is not only the Giver but the Sharer of my life. My
natural powers are that part of God’s power which is lodged with
me in trust to keep and use.” Man can be an _instrument_ of God,
without being an _agent_ of God. “Each man has his place and value
as a reflection of God and of Christ. Like a letter in a word, or
a word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; but
the sentence is meaningless without him; rays from the whole
universe converge in him.” John Howe’s Living Temple shows the
greatness of human nature in its first construction and even in
its ruin. Only a noble ship could make so great a wreck.
Aristotle, Problem, sec. 30—“No excellent soul is exempt from a
mixture of madness.” Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, 15—“There is
no great genius without a tincture of madness.”

Kant: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or
in that of any other, in every case as an _end_, and never as a
_means_ only.” If there is a divine element in every man, then we
have no right to _use_ a human being merely for our own pleasure
or profit. In receiving him we receive Christ, and in receiving
Christ we receive him who sent Christ (_Mat. 10:40_). Christ is
the vine and all men are his natural branches, cutting themselves
off only when they refuse to bear fruit, and condemning themselves
to the burning only because they destroy, so far as they can
destroy, God’s image in them, all that makes them worth preserving
(_John 15:1-6_). Cicero: “Homo mortalis deus.” This possession of
natural likeness to God, or personality, involves boundless
possibilities of good or ill, and it constitutes the natural
foundation of the love for man which is required of us by the law.
Indeed it constitutes the reason why Christ should die. Man was
worth redeeming. The woman whose ring slipped from her finger and
fell into the heap of mud in the gutter, bared her white arm and
thrust her hand into the slimy mass until she found her ring; but
she would not have done this if the ring had not contained a
costly diamond. The lost piece of money, the lost sheep, the lost
son, were worth effort to seek and to save (_Luke 15_). But, on
the other hand, it is folly when man, made in the image of God,
“blinds himself with clay.” The man on shipboard, who playfully
tossed up the diamond ring which contained his whole fortune, at
last to his distress tossed it overboard. There is a “_merchandise
of souls_” (_Rev. 18:13_) and we must not juggle with them.

Christ’s death for man, by showing the worth of humanity, has
recreated ethics. “Plato defended infanticide as under certain
circumstances permissible. Aristotle viewed slavery as founded in
the nature of things. The reason assigned was the essential
inferiority of nature on the part of the enslaved.” But the divine
image in man makes these barbarities no longer possible to us.
Christ sometimes looked upon men with anger, but he never looked
upon them with contempt. He taught the woman, he blessed the
child, he cleansed the leper, he raised the dead. His own death
revealed the infinite worth of the meanest human soul, and taught
us to count all men as brethren for whose salvation we may well
lay down our lives. George Washington answered the salute of his
slave. Abraham Lincoln took off his hat to a negro who gave him
his blessing as he entered Richmond; but a lady who had been
brought up under the old regime looked from a window upon the
scene with unspeakable horror. Robert Burns, walking with a
nobleman in Edinburgh, met an old townsfellow from Ayr and stopped
to talk with him. The nobleman, kept waiting, grew restive, and
afterward reproved Burns for talking to a man with so bad a coat.
Burns replied: “I was not talking to the coat,—I was talking to
the man.” Jean Ingelow: “The street and market place Grow holy
ground: each face—Pale faces marked with care, Dark, toilworn
brows—grows fair. King’s children are all these, though want and
sin Have marred their beauty, glorious within. We may not pass
them but with reverent eye.” See Porter, Human Intellect, 393,
394, 401; Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:42; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
2:343.

2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.

In addition to the powers of self-consciousness and self-determination
just mentioned, man was created with such a direction of the affections
and the will, as constituted God the supreme end of man’s being, and
constituted man a finite reflection of God’s moral attributes. Since
holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, this must of necessity be
the chief attribute of his image in the moral beings whom he creates. That
original righteousness was essential to this image, is also distinctly
taught in Scripture (Eccl. 7:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

Besides the possession of natural powers, the image of God
involves the possession of right moral tendencies. It is not
enough to say that man was created in a state of innocence. The
Scripture asserts that man had a righteousness like God’s: _Eccl.
7:29_—“_God made man upright_”; _Eph. 4:24_—“_the new man, that
after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of
truth_”—here Meyer says: “κατὰ Θεόν, ‘_after God_,’ _i. e._, _ad
exemplum Dei_, after the pattern of God (_Gal. 4:28_—κατὰ Ἰσαάκ,
‘after Isaac’ = as Isaac was). This phrase makes the creation of
the new man a parallel to that of our first parents, who were
created after God’s image; they too, before sin came into
existence through Adam, were sinless—‘_in righteousness and
holiness of truth_.’ ” On N. T. “truth” = rectitude, see Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, 1:257-260.

Meyer refers also, as a parallel passage, to _Col. 3:10_—“_the new
man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him
that created him._” Here the “_knowledge_” referred to is that
knowledge of God which is the source of all virtue, and which is
inseparable from holiness of heart. “Holiness has two sides or
phases: (1) it is perception and knowledge; (2) it is inclination
and feeling” (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:97). On _Eph. 4:24_ and _Col.
3:10_, the classical passages with regard to man’s original state,
see also the Commentaries of DeWette, Rückert, Ellicott, and
compare _Gen. 5:3_—“_And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years,
and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image,_” _i. e._,
in his own sinful likeness, which is evidently contrasted with the
“_likeness of God_” (_verse 1_) in which he himself had been
created (An. Par. Bible). _2 Cor. 4:4_—“_Christ, who is the image
of God_”—where the phrase “_image of God_” is not simply the
_natural_, but also the _moral_, image. Since Christ is the image
of God primarily in his holiness, man’s creation in the image of
God must have involved a holiness like Christ’s, so far as such
holiness could belong to a being yet untried, that is, so far as
respects man’s tastes and dispositions prior to moral action.

“Couldst thou in vision see Thyself the man God meant, Thou
nevermore couldst be The man thou art—content.” Newly created man
had right moral tendencies, as well as freedom from actual fault.
Otherwise the communion with God described in Genesis would not
have been possible. Goethe: “Unless the eye were sunlike, how
could it see the sun?” Because a holy disposition accompanied
man’s innocence, he was capable of obedience, and was guilty when
he sinned. The loss of this moral likeness to God was the chief
calamity of the Fall. Man is now “the glory and the scandal of the
universe.” He has defaced the image of God in his nature, even
though that image, in its natural aspect, is ineffaceable (E. H.
Johnson).

The dignity of human nature consists, not so much in what man is,
as in what God meant him to be, and in what God means him yet to
become, when the lost image of God is restored by the union of
man’s soul with Christ. Because of his future possibilities, the
meanest of mankind is sacred. The great sin of the second table of
the decalogue is the sin of despising our fellow man. To cherish
contempt for others can have its root only in idolatry of self and
rebellion against God. Abraham Lincoln said well that “God must
have liked common people,—else he would not have made so many of
them.” Regard for the image of God in man leads also to kind and
reverent treatment even of those lower animals in which so many
human characteristics are foreshadowed. Bradford, Heredity and
Christian Problems, 166—“The current philosophy says: The fittest
will survive; let the rest die. The religion of Christ says: That
maxim as applied to men is just, only as regards their
characteristics, of which indeed only the fittest should survive.
It does not and cannot apply to the men themselves, since all men,
being children of God, are supremely fit. The very fact that a
human being is sick, weak, poor, an outcast, and a vagabond, is
the strongest possible appeal for effort toward his salvation. Let
individuals look upon humanity from the point of view of Christ,
and they will not be long in finding ways in which environment can
be caused to work for righteousness.”

This original righteousness, in which the image of God chiefly consisted,
is to be viewed:

(_a_) Not as constituting the substance or essence of human nature,—for in
this case human nature would have ceased to exist as soon as man sinned.

Men every day change their tastes and loves, without changing the
essence or substance of their being. When sin is called a
“nature,” therefore (as by Shedd, in his Essay on “Sin a Nature,
and that Nature Guilt”), it is only in the sense of being
something inborn (_natura_, from _nascor_). Hereditary tastes may
just as properly be denominated a “nature” as may the substance of
one’s being. Moehler, the greatest modern Roman Catholic critic of
Protestant doctrine, in his Symbolism, 58, 59, absurdly holds
Luther to have taught that by the Fall man lost his essential
nature, and that another essence was substituted in its room.
Luther, however, is only rhetorical when he says: “It is the
nature of man to sin; sin constitutes the essence of man; the
nature of man since the Fall has become quite changed; original
sin is that very thing which is born of father and mother; the
clay out of which we are formed is damnable; the fœtus in the
maternal womb is sin; man as born of his father and mother,
together with his whole essence and nature, is not only a sinner
but sin itself.”

(_b_) Nor as a _gift_ from without, foreign to human nature, and added to
it after man’s creation,—for man is said to have possessed the divine
image by the fact of creation, and not by subsequent bestowal.

As men, since Adam, are born with a sinful nature, that is, with
tendencies away from God, so Adam was created with a holy nature,
that is, with tendencies toward God. Moehler says: “God cannot
give a man actions.” We reply: “No, but God can give man
dispositions; and he does this at the first creation, as well as
at the new creation (regeneration).”

(_c_) But rather, as an original direction or tendency of man’s affections
and will, still accompanied by the power of evil choice, and so, differing
from the perfected holiness of the saints, as instinctive affection and
child-like innocence differ from the holiness that has been developed and
confirmed by experience of temptation.

Man’s original righteousness was not immutable or indefectible;
there was still the possibility of sinning. Though the first man
was fundamentally good, he still had the power of choosing evil.
There was a bent of the affections and will toward God, but man
was not yet confirmed in holiness. Man’s love for God was like the
germinal filial affection in the child, not developed, yet
sincere—“caritas puerilis, non virilis.”

(_d_) As a moral disposition, moreover, which was propagable to Adam’s
descendants, if it continued, and which, though lost to him and to them,
if Adam sinned, would still leave man possessed of a natural likeness to
God which made him susceptible of God’s redeeming grace.

Hooker (Works, ed. Keble, 2:683) distinguishes between aptness and
ableness. The latter, men have lost; the former, they retain,—else
grace could not work in us, more than in the brutes. Hase: “Only
enough likeness to God remained to remind man of what he had lost,
and enable him to feel the hell of God’s forsaking.” The moral
likeness to God can be restored, but only by God himself. God
secures this to men by making “_the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the image of God, ... dawn upon them_” (_2
Cor. 4:4_). Pusey made _Ps. 72:6_—“_He will come down like rain
upon the mown grass_”—the image of a world hopelessly dead, but
with a hidden capacity for receiving life. Dr. Daggett: “Man is a
‘_son of the morning_’ (_Is. 14:12_), fallen, yet arrested midway
between heaven and hell, a prize between the powers of light and
darkness.” See Edwards, Works, 2:19, 20, 381-390; Hopkins, Works,
1:162; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:50-66; Augustine, De Civitate Dei,
14:11.

In the light of the preceding investigation, we may properly estimate two
theories of man’s original state which claim to be more Scriptural and
reasonable:

A. The image of God as including only personality.

This theory denies that any positive determination to virtue inhered
originally in man’s nature, and regards man at the beginning as simply
possessed of spiritual powers, perfectly adjusted to each other. This is
the view of Schleiermacher, who is followed by Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and
Hofmann.

For the view here combated, see Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube,
sec. 60; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine, 201; Julius
Müller, Doct. of Sin, 2:113-133, 350-357; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis,
1:287-291; Bib. Sac., 7:409-425. Julius Müller’s theory of the
Fall in a preëxistent state makes it impossible for him to hold
here that Adam was possessed of moral likeness to God. The origin
of his view of the image of God renders it liable to suspicion.
Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 113—“The original state of man was that of
child-like innocence or morally indifferent naturalness, which had
in itself indeed the possibility (_Anlage_) of ideal development,
but in such a way that its realization could be reached only by
struggle with its natural opposite. The image of God was already
present in the original state, but only as the possibility
(_Anlage_) of real likeness to God—the endowment of reason which
belonged to human personality. The _reality_ of a spirit like that
of God has appeared first in the _second_ Adam, and has become the
principle of the kingdom of God.”

Raymond (Theology, 2:43, 132) is an American representative of the
view that the image of God consists in mere personality: “The
image of God in which man was created did not consist in an
inclination and determination of the will to holiness.” This is
maintained upon the ground that such a moral likeness to God would
have rendered it impossible for man to fall,—to which we reply
that Adam’s righteousness was not immutable, and the bias of his
will toward God did not render it impossible for him to sin.
Motives do not compel the will, and Adam at least had a certain
power of contrary choice. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology,
119-122, also maintains that the image of God signified only that
personality which distinguished man from the brute. Christ, he
says, carries forward human nature to a higher point, instead of
merely restoring what is lost. “_Very good_” (_Gen. 1:31_) does
not imply moral perfection,—this cannot be the result of creation,
but only of discipline and will. Man’s original state was only one
of untried innocence. Dr. Robinson is combating the view that the
first man was at his creation possessed of a developed character.
He distinguishes between character and the germs of character.
These germs he grants that man possessed. And so he defines the
image of God as a constitutional predisposition toward a course of
right conduct. This is all the perfection which we claim for the
first man. We hold that this predisposition toward the good can
properly be called character, since it is the germ from which all
holy action springs.

In addition to what has already been said in support of the opposite view,
we may urge against this theory the following objections:

(_a_) It is contrary to analogy, in making man the author of his own
holiness; our sinful condition is not the product of our individual wills,
nor is our subsequent condition of holiness the product of anything but
God’s regenerating power.

To hold that Adam was created undecided, would make man, as
Philippi says, in the highest sense his own creator. But morally,
as well as physically, man is God’s creature. In regeneration it
is not sufficient for God to give _power_ to decide for good; God
must give new _love_ also. If this be so in the new creation, God
could give love in the first creation also. Holiness therefore is
creatable. “_Underived_ holiness is possible only in God; in its
origin, it is _given_ both to angels and men.” Therefore we pray:
“_Create in me a clean heart_” (_Ps. 51:10_); “_Incline my heart
unto thy testimonies_” (_Ps. 119:36_). See Edwards, Eff. Grace,
sec. 43-51; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 290—“If Adam’s perfection was not a
moral perfection, then his sin was no real moral corruption.” The
_animus_ of the theory we are combating seems to be an
unwillingness to grant that man, either in his first creation or
in his new creation, owes his holiness to God.

(_b_) The knowledge of God in which man was originally created logically
presupposes a direction toward God of man’s affections and will, since
only the holy heart can have any proper understanding of the God of
holiness.

“Ubi caritas, ibi claritas.” Man’s heart was originally filled
with divine love, and out of this came the knowledge of God. We
know God only as we love him, and this love comes not from our own
single volition. No one loves by command, because no one can give
himself love. In Adam love was an inborn impulse, which he could
affirm or deny. Compare _1 Cor. 8:3_—“_if any man loveth God, the
same_ [God] _is known by him_”; _1 John 4:8_—“_He that loveth not
knoweth not God._” See other Scripture references on pages 3, 4.

(_c_) A likeness to God in mere personality, such as Satan also possesses,
comes far short of answering the demands of the Scripture, in which the
ethical conception of the divine nature so overshadows the merely natural.
The image of God must be, not simply ability to be like God, but actual
likeness.

God could never create an intelligent being evenly balanced
between good and evil—“on the razor’s edge”—“on the fence.” The
preacher who took for his text “_Adam, where art thou?_” had for
his first head: “It is every man’s business to be somewhere;” for
his second: “Some of you are where you ought not to be;” and for
his third: “Get where you ought to be, as soon as possible.” A
simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already
sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a
violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent
of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 45-84—“Personality is
only the basis of the divine image,—it is not the image itself.”
Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon
(On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: “There can be
no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam’s nature as created
was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he
had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the
contrary.” We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For
substance of these objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:346.
Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no
character. Goethe partook of this cosmopolitan characterlessness
(Prof. Seely). Tennyson had Goethe in view when he wrote in The
Palace of Art: “I sit apart, holding no form of creed, but
contemplating all.” And Goethe is probably still alluded to in the
words: “A glorious devil, large in heart and brain, That did love
beauty only, Or if good, good only for its beauty”; see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 331; Robert Browning,
Christmas Eve: “The truth in God’s breast Lies trace for trace
upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are
made in his image to witness him.”

B. The image of God as consisting simply in man’s natural capacity for
religion.

This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the
Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness
of God. The former (צלם—Gen. 1:26) alone belonged to man’s nature at its
creation. The latter (דמות) was the product of his own acts of obedience.
In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent
likeness to God more sure, a third element was added—an element not
belonging to man’s nature—namely, a supernatural gift of special grace,
which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under
the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural
endowment, but a joint product of man’s obedience and of God’s
supernatural grace.

Roman Catholicism holds that the white paper of man’s soul
received two impressions instead of one. Protestantism sees no
reason why both impressions should not have been given at the
beginning. Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:708, gives a good
statement of the Roman Catholic view. It holds that the supreme
good transcends the finite mind and its powers of comprehension.
Even at the first it was beyond man’s created nature. The _donum
superadditum_ did not inwardly and personally belong to him. Now
that he has lost it, he is entirely dependent on the church for
truth and grace. He does not receive the truth because it is this
and no other, but because the church tells him that it is the
truth.

The Roman Catholic doctrine may be roughly and pictorially stated
as follows: As created, man was morally naked, or devoid of
positive righteousness (_pura naturalia_, or _in puris
naturalibus_). By obedience he obtained as a reward from God
(_donum supernaturale_, or _superadditum_) a suit of clothes or
robe of righteousness to protect him, so that he became clothed
(_vestitus_). This suit of clothes, however, was a sort of magic
spell of which he could be divested. The adversary attacked him
and stripped him of his suit. After his sin he was one despoiled
(_spoliatus_). But his condition after differed from his condition
before this attack, only as a stripped man differs from a naked
man (_spoliatus a nudo_). He was now only in the same state in
which he was created, with the single exception of the weakness he
might feel as the result of losing his customary clothing. He
could still earn himself another suit,—in fact, he could earn two
or more, so as to sell, or give away, what he did not need for
himself. The phrase _in puris naturalibus_ describes the original
state, as the phrase _spoliatus a nudo_ describes the difference
resulting from man’s sin.

Many of the considerations already adduced apply equally as arguments
against this view. We may say, however, with reference to certain features
peculiar to the theory:

(_a_) No such distinction can justly be drawn between the words צלם and
דםות. The addition of the synonym simply strengthens the expression, and
both together signify “the very image.”

(_b_) Whatever is denoted by either or both of these words was bestowed
upon man in and by the fact of creation, and the additional hypothesis of
a supernatural gift not originally belonging to man’s nature, but
subsequently conferred, has no foundation either here or elsewhere in
Scripture. Man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of
God, not to have been afterwards endowed with either of them.

(_c_) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory
supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that the work of
God’s hands “was very good” (Gen. 1:31), and transfers the blame of
temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative
innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author
of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin
inevitable.

(_d_) This theory directly contradicts Scripture by making the effect of
the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human
nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the affections
but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that
first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as
putting him where he was when first created—still able to obey God and to
coöperate with God for his own salvation,—whereas the Scripture represents
man since the fall as “dead through ... trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1),
as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8:7—“not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can it be”), and as needing to be “created in Christ Jesus
for good works” (Eph. 2:10).

At few points in Christian doctrine do we see more clearly than
here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from
what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from
the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that in Adam the _posse
non peccare_ was accompanied by a _posse peccare_, and that for
this reason man’s holy disposition needed the help of divine grace
to preserve its integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that
this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of
man’s nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As
this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of
Trent (sess. 5, cap. 1) left the matter more indefinite, simply
declaring man: “Sanctitatem et justitiam in qua _constitutus
fuerat_, amisisse.” The Roman Catechism, however (1:2:19),
explained the phrase “constitutus fuerat” by the words: “Tum
originalis justitiæ admirabile donum _addidit_.” And Bellarmine
(De Gratia, 2) says plainly: “Imago, quæ est ipsa natura mentis et
voluntatis, a solo Deo fieri potuit; similitudo autem, quæ in
virtute et probitate consistit, _a nobis quoque_ Deo adjuvante
perficitur.”... (5) “Integritas illa ... non fuit naturalis ejus
conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio.... Addidisse homini donum
quoddam insigne, justitiam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo
quodam fræno pars inferior parti superiori subjecta contineretur.”

Moehler (Symbolism, 21-35) holds that the religious faculty—the
“image of God”; the pious exertion of this faculty—the “likeness
of God.” He seems to favor the view that Adam received “this
supernatural gift of a holy and blessed communion with God at a
later period than his creation, _i. e._, only when he had prepared
himself for its reception and by his own efforts had rendered
himself worthy of it.” He was created “just” and acceptable to
God, even without communion with God or help from God. He became
“holy” and enjoyed communion with God, only when God rewarded his
obedience and bestowed the _supernaturale donum_. Although Moehler
favors this view and claims that it is permitted by the standards,
he also says that it is not definitely taught. The quotations from
Bellarmine and the Roman Catechism above make it clear that it is
the prevailing doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

So, to quote the words of Shedd, “the Tridentine theology starts
with Pelagianism and ends with Augustinianism. Created without
character, God subsequently endows man with character.... The
Papal idea of creation differs from the Augustinian in that it
involves imperfection. There is a disease and languor which
require a subsequent and supernatural act to remedy.” The
Augustinian and Protestant conception of man’s original state is
far nobler than this. The ethical element is not a later addition,
but is man’s true nature—essential to God’s idea of him. The
normal and original condition of man (_pura naturalia_) is one of
grace and of the Spirit’s indwelling—hence, of direction toward
God.

From this original difference between Roman Catholic and
Protestant doctrine with regard to man’s original state result
diverging views as to sin and as to regeneration. The Protestant
holds that, as man was possessed by creation of moral likeness to
God, or holiness, so his sin robbed his nature of its integrity,
deprived it of essential and concreated advantages and powers, and
substituted for these a positive corruption and tendency to evil.
Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is original sin; as
concreated love for God constituted man’s original righteousness.
No man since the fall has original righteousness, and it is man’s
sin that he has it not. Since without love to God no act, emotion,
or thought of man can answer the demands of God’s law, the
Scripture denies to fallen man all power of himself to know,
think, feel, or do aright. His nature therefore needs a
new-creation, a resurrection from death, such as God only, by his
mighty Spirit, can work; and to this work of God man can
contribute nothing, except as power is first given him by God
himself.

According to the Roman Catholic view, however, since the image of
God in which man was created included only man’s religious
faculty, his sin can rob him only of what became subsequently and
adventitiously his. Fallen man differs from unfallen only as
_spoliatus a nudo_. He loses only a sort of magic spell, which
leaves him still in possession of all his essential powers.
Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is not sin; for this
belonged to his nature even before he fell. His sin has therefore
only put him back into the natural state of conflict and
concupiscence, ordered by God in the concreated opposition of
sense and reason. The sole qualification is this, that, having
made an evil decision, his will is weakened. “Man does not need
resurrection from death, but rather a crutch to help his lameness,
a tonic to reinforce his feebleness, a medicine to cure his
sickness.” He is still able to turn to God; and in regeneration
the Holy Spirit simply awakens and strengthens the natural ability
slumbering in the natural man. But even here, man must yield to
the influence of the Holy Spirit; and regeneration is effected by
uniting his power to the divine. In baptism the guilt of original
sin is remitted, and everything called sin is taken away. No
baptized person has any further process of regeneration to
undergo. Man has not only strength to coöperate with God for his
own salvation, but he may even go beyond the demands of the law
and perform works of supererogation. And the whole sacramental
system of the Roman Catholic Church, with its salvation by works,
its purgatorial fires, and its invocation of the saints, connects
itself logically with this erroneous theory of man’s original
state.

See Dorner’s Augustinus, 116; Perrone, Prælectiones Theologicæ,
1:737-748; Winer, Confessions, 79, 80; Dorner, History Protestant
Theology, 38, 39, and Glaubenslehre, 1:51; Van Oosterzee,
Dogmatics, 376; Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:516-586; Shedd,
Hist. Doctrine, 2:140-149.

II. Incidents of Man’s Original State.

1. Results of man’s possession of the divine image.

(_a_) Reflection of this divine image in man’s physical form.—Even in
man’s body were typified those higher attributes which chiefly constituted
his likeness to God. A gross perversion of this truth, however, is the
view which holds, upon the ground of Gen. 2:7, and 3:8, that the image of
God consists in bodily resemblance to the Creator. In the first of these
passages, it is not the divine image, but the body, that is formed of
dust, and into this body the soul that possesses the divine image is
breathed. The second of these passages is to be interpreted by those other
portions of the Pentateuch in which God is represented as free from all
limitations of matter (Gen. 11:5; 18:15).

The spirit presents the divine image immediately: the body,
mediately. The scholastics called the soul the image of God
_proprie_; the body they called the image of God _significative_.
Soul is the direct reflection of God; body is the reflection of
that reflection. The _os sublime_ manifests the dignity of the
endowments within. Hence the word “upright,” as applied to moral
condition; one of the first impulses of the renewed man is to
physical purity. Compare Ovid, Metaph., bk. 1, Dryden’s transl.:
“Thus while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to
their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.” (Ἄνθρωπος, from ἀνά, ἄνω,
suffix _tra_, and ὢψ, with reference to the upright posture.)
Milton speaks of “the human face divine.” S. S. Times, July 28,
1900—“Man is the only erect being among living creatures. He alone
looks up naturally and without effort. He foregoes his birthright
when he looks only at what is on a level with his eyes and
occupies himself only with what lies in the plane of his own
existence.”

Bretschneider (Dogmatik, 1:682) regards the Scripture as teaching
that the image of God consists in bodily resemblance to the
Creator, but considers this as only the imperfect method of
representation belonging to an early age. So Strauss,
Glaubenslehre, 1:687. They refer to _Gen. 2:7_—“_And Jehovah God
formed man of the dust of the ground_”; _3:8_—“_Jehovah God
walking in the garden._” But see _Gen. 11:5_—“_And Jehovah came
down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men
builded_”; _Is. 66:1_—“_Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool_”; _1 K. 8:27_—“_behold, heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain thee._” On the Anthropomorphites, see
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:103, 308, 491. For answers to
Bretschneider and Strauss, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:364.

(_b_) Subjection of the sensuous impulses to the control of the
spirit.—Here we are to hold a middle ground between two extremes. On the
one hand, the first man possessed a body and a spirit so fitted to each
other that no conflict was felt between their several claims. On the other
hand, this physical perfection was not final and absolute, but relative
and provisional. There was still room for progress to a higher state of
being (Gen. 3:22).

Sir Henry Watton’s Happy Life: “That man was free from servile
bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall, Lord of himself if not of
lands, And having nothing yet had all.” Here we hold to the
_æquale temperamentum_. There was no disease, but rather the joy
of abounding health. Labor was only a happy activity. God’s
infinite creatorship and fountainhead of being was typified in
man’s powers of generation. But there was no concreated opposition
of sense and reason, nor an imperfect physical nature with whose
impulses reason was at war. With this moderate Scriptural
doctrine, contrast the exaggerations of the Fathers and of the
scholastics. Augustine says that Adam’s reason was to ours what
the bird’s is to that of the tortoise; propagation in the unfallen
state would have been without concupiscence, and the new-born
child would have attained perfection at birth. Albertus Magnus
thought the first man would have felt no pain, even though he had
been stoned with heavy stones. Scotus Erigena held that the male
and female elements were yet undistinguished. Others called
sexuality the first sin. Jacob Boehme regarded the intestinal
canal, and all connected with it, as the consequence of the Fall;
he had the fancy that the earth was transparent at the first and
cast no shadow,—sin, he thought, had made it opaque and dark;
redemption would restore it to its first estate and make night a
thing of the past. South, Sermons, 1:24, 25—“Man came into the
world a philosopher.... Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam.”
Lyman Abbott tells us of a minister who assured his congregation
that Adam was acquainted with the telephone. But God educates his
children, as chemists educate their pupils, by putting them into
the laboratory and letting them work. Scripture does not represent
Adam as a walking encyclopædia, but as a being yet inexperienced;
see _Gen. 3:22_—“_Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil_”; _1 Cor. 15:46_—“_that is not first which is
spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is
spiritual._” On this last text, see Expositor’s Greek Testament.

(_c_) Dominion over the lower creation.—Adam possessed an insight into
nature analogous to that of susceptible childhood, and therefore was able
to name and to rule the brute creation (Gen. 2:19). Yet this native
insight was capable of development into the higher knowledge of culture
and science. From Gen. 1:26 (_cf._ Ps. 8:5-8), it has been erroneously
inferred that the image of God in man consists in dominion over the brute
creation and the natural world. But, in this verse, the words “let them
have dominion” do not define the image of God, but indicate the result of
possessing that image. To make the image of God consist in this dominion,
would imply that only the divine omnipotence was shadowed forth in man.

_Gen. 2:19_—“_Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and
every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see
what he would call them_”; _20_—“_And the man gave names to all
cattle_”; _Gen. 1:26_—“_Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle_”; _cf._ _Ps.
8:5-8_—“_thou hast made him but little lower than God, And
crownest him with glory and honor. Thou makest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things
under his feet: All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the
field._” Adam’s naming the animals implied insight into their
nature; see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 393, 394, 401. On man’s
original dominion over (1) self, (2) nature, (3) fellow-man, see
Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105.

Courage and a good conscience have a power over the brute
creation, and unfallen man can well be supposed to have dominated
creatures which had no experience of human cruelty. Rarey tamed
the wildest horses by his steadfast and fearless eye. In Paris a
young woman was hypnotized and put into a den of lions. She had no
fear of the lions and the lions paid not the slightest attention
to her. The little daughter of an English officer in South Africa
wandered away from camp and spent the night among lions.
“Katrina,” her father said when he found her, “were you not afraid
to be alone here?” “No, papa,” she replied, “the big dogs played
with me and one of them lay here and kept me warm.” MacLaren, in
S. S. Times, Dec. 23, 1893—“The dominion over all creatures
results from likeness to God. It is not then a mere right to use
them for one’s own material advantage, but a viceroy’s authority,
which the holder is bound to employ for the honor of the true
King.” This principle gives the warrant and the limit to
vivisection and to the killing of the lower animals for food
(_Gen. 9:2, 3._).

Socinian writers generally hold the view that the image of God
consisted simply in this dominion. Holding a low view of the
nature of sin, they are naturally disinclined to believe that the
fall has wrought any profound change in human nature. See their
view stated in the Racovian Catechism, 21. It is held also by the
Arminian Limborch, Theol. Christ., ii, 24:2, 3, 11. Upon the basis
of this interpretation of Scripture, the Encratites held, with
Peter Martyr, that women do not possess the divine image at all.

(_d_) Communion with God.—Our first parents enjoyed the divine presence
and teaching (Gen. 2:16). It would seem that God manifested himself to
them in visible form (Gen. 3:8). This companionship was both in kind and
degree suited to their spiritual capacity, and by no means necessarily
involved that perfected vision of God which is possible to beings of
confirmed and unchangeable holiness (Mat. 5:8; 1 John 3:2).

_Gen. 2:16_—“_And Jehovah God commanded the man_”; _3:8_—“_And
they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day_”; _Mat. 5:8_—“_Blessed are the pure in heart: for
they shall see God_”; _1 John 3:2_—“_We know that, if he shall be
manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he
is_”; _Rev. 22:4_—“_and they shall see his his face._”

2. Concomitants of man’s possession of the divine image.

(_a_) Surroundings and society fitted to yield happiness and to assist a
holy development of human nature (Eden and Eve). We append some recent
theories with regard to the creation of Eve and the nature of Eden.

Eden—pleasure, delight. Tennyson: “When high in Paradise By the
four rivers the first roses blew.” Streams were necessary to the
very existence of an oriental garden. Hopkins, Script. Idea of
Man, 107—“Man includes woman. Creation of _a_ man without a woman
would not have been the creation of man. Adam called her name Eve
but God called their name Adam.” Mat. Henry: “Not out of his head
to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him; but out
of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by
him, and near his heart to be beloved.” Robert Burns says of
nature: “Her ’prentice hand she tried on man, And then she made
the lasses, O!” Stevens, Pauline Theology, 329—“In the natural
relations of the sexes there is a certain reciprocal dependence,
since it is not only true that woman was made from man, but that
man is born of woman (_1 Cor. 11:11, 12_).” Of the Elgin marbles
Boswell asked: “Don’t you think them indecent?” Dr. Johnson
replied: “No, sir; but your question is.” Man, who in the adult
state possesses twelve pairs of ribs, is found in the embryonic
state to have thirteen or fourteen. Dawson, Modern Ideas of
Evolution, 148—“Why does not the male man lack one rib? Because
only the individual skeleton of Adam was affected by the taking of
the rib.... The unfinished vertebral arches of the skin-fibrous
layer may have produced a new individual by a process of budding
or gemmation.”

H. H. Bawden suggests that the account of Eve’s creation may be
the “pictorial summary” of an actual phylogenetic evolutionary
process by which the sexes were separated or isolated from a
common hermaphroditic ancestor or ancestry. The mesodermic portion
of the organism in which the urinogenital system has its origin
develops later than the ectodermic or the endodermic portions. The
word “rib” may designate this mesodermic portion. Bayard Taylor,
John Godfrey’s Fortunes, 392, suggests that a genius is
hermaphroditic, adding a male element to the woman, and a female
element to the man. Professor Loeb, Am. Journ. Physiology, Vol.
III, no. 3, has found that in certain chemical solutions prepared
in the laboratory, approximately the concentration of sea-water,
the unfertilized eggs of the sea-urchin will mature without the
intervention of the spermatozoön. Perfect embryos and normal
individuals are produced under these conditions. He thinks it
probable that similar parthenogenesis may be produced in higher
types of being. In 1900 he achieved successful results on
Annelids, though it is doubtful whether he produced anything more
than normal _larvæ_. These results have been criticized by a
European investigator who is also a Roman priest. Prof. Loeb wrote
a rejoinder in which he expressed surprise that a representative
of the Roman church did not heartily endorse his conclusions,
since they afford a vindication of the doctrine of the immaculate
conception.

H. H. Bawden has reviewed Prof. Loeb’s work in the Psychological
Review, Jan. 1900. Janósik has found segmentation in the
unfertilized eggs of mammalians. Prof. Loeb considers it possible
that only the ions of the blood prevent the parthenogenetic origin
of embryos in mammals, and thinks it not improbable that by a
transitory change in these ions it will be possible to produce
complete parthenogenesis in these higher types. Dr. Bawden goes on
to say that “both parent and child are dependent upon a common
source of energy. The universe is one great organism, and there is
no inorganic or non-organic matter, but differences only in
degrees of organization. Sex is designed only secondarily for the
perpetuation of species; primarily it is the bond or medium for
the connection and interaction of the various parts of this great
organism, for maintaining that degree of heterogeneity which is
the prerequisite of a high degree of organization. By means of the
growth of a lifetime I have become an essential part in a great
organic system. What I call my individual personality represents
simply the focusing, the flowering of the universe at one finite
concrete point or centre. Must not then my personality continue as
long as that universal system continues? And is immortality
conceivable if the soul is something shut up within itself,
unshareable and unique? Are not the many foci mutually
interdependent, instead of mutually exclusive? We must not then
conceive of an immortality which means the continued existence of
an individual cut off from that social context which is really
essential to his very nature.”

J. H. Richardson suggests in the Standard, Sept. 10, 1901, that
the first chapter of Genesis describes the creation of the
spiritual part of man only—that part which was made in the image
of God—while the second chapter describes the creation of man’s
body, the animal part, which may have been originated by a process
of evolution. S. W. Howland, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903:121-128,
supposes Adam and Eve to have been twins, joined by the ensiform
cartilage or breast-bone, as were the Siamese Chang and Eng. By
violence or accident this cartilage was broken before it hardened
into bone, and the two were separated until puberty. Then Adam saw
Eve coming to him with a bone projecting from her side
corresponding to the hollow in his own side, and said: “She is
bone of my bone; she must have been taken from my side when I
slept.” This tradition was handed down to his posterity. The Jews
have a tradition that Adam was created double-sexed, and that the
two sexes were afterwards separated. The Hindus say that man was
at first of both sexes and divided himself in order to people the
earth. In the Zodiac of Dendera, Castor and Pollux appear as man
and woman, and these twins, some say, were called Adam and Eve.
The Coptic name for this sign is _Pi Mahi_, “the United.” Darwin,
in the postscript to a letter to Lyell, written as early as July,
1850, tells his friend that he has “a pleasant genealogy for
mankind,” and describes our remotest ancestor as “an animal which
breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an
imperfect skull, and was undoubtedly a hermaphrodite.”

Matthew Arnold speaks of “the freshness of the early world.”
Novalis says that “all philosophy begins in homesickness.”
Shelley, Skylark: “We look before and after, And pine for what is
not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our
sweetest songs are those That tell of saddest thought.”—“The
golden conception of a Paradise is the poet’s guiding thought.”
There is a universal feeling that we are not now in our natural
state; that we are far away from home; that we are exiles from our
true habitation. Keble, Groans of Nature: “Such thoughts, the
wreck of Paradise, Through many a dreary age, Upbore whate’er of
good or wise Yet lived in bard or sage.” Poetry and music echo the
longing for some possession lost. Jessica in Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice: “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.”
All true poetry is forward-looking or backward-looking prophecy,
as sculpture sets before us the original or the resurrection body.
See Isaac Taylor, Hebrew Poetry, 94-101; Tyler, Theol. of Greek
Poets, 225, 226.

Wellhausen, on the legend of a golden age, says: “It is the
yearning song which goes through all the peoples: having attained
the historical civilization, they feel the worth of the goods
which they have sacrificed for it.” He regards the golden age as
only an ideal image, like the millennial kingdom at the end. Man
differs from the beast in this power to form ideals. His
destination _to_ God shows his descent _from_ God. Hegel in a
similar manner claimed that the Paradisaic condition is only an
ideal conception underlying human development. But may not the
traditions of the gardens of Brahma and of the Hesperides embody
the world’s recollection of an historical fact, when man was free
from external evil and possessed all that could minister to
innocent joy? The “golden age” of the heathen was connected with
the hope of restoration. So the use of the doctrine of man’s
original state is to convince men of the high ideal once realized,
properly belonging to man, now lost, and recoverable, not by man’s
own powers, but only through God’s provision in Christ. For
references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt,
Compendium, 115. He mentions the following: Hesiod, Works and
Days, 109-208; Aratus, Phenom., 100-184; Plato, Tim., 233; Vergil,
Ec., 4, Georgics, 1:135, Æneid, 8:314.

(_b_) Provisions for the trying of man’s virtue.—Since man was not yet in
a state of confirmed holiness, but rather of simple childlike innocence,
he could be made perfect only through temptation. Hence the “tree of the
knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9). The one slight command best tested
the spirit of obedience. Temptation did not necessitate a fall, If
resisted, it would strengthen virtue. In that case, the _posse non
peccare_ would have become the _non posse peccare_.

Thomasius: “That evil is a necessary transition-point to good, is
Satan’s doctrine and philosophy.” The tree was mainly a tree of
probation. It is right for a father to make his son’s title to his
estate depend upon the performance of some filial duty, as
Thaddeus Stevens made his son’s possession of property conditional
upon his keeping the temperance-pledge. Whether, besides this, the
tree of knowledge was naturally hurtful or poisonous, we do not
know.

(_c_) Opportunity of securing physical immortality.—The body of the first
man was in itself mortal (1 Cor. 15:45). Science shows that physical life
involves decay and loss. But means were apparently provided for checking
this decay and preserving the body’s youth. This means was the “tree of
life” (Gen. 2:9). If Adam had maintained his integrity, the body might
have been developed and transfigured, without intervention of death. In
other words, the _posse non mori_ might have become a _non posse mori_.

The tree of life was symbolic of communion with God and of man’s
dependence upon him. But this, only because it had a physical
efficacy. It was sacramental and memorial to the soul, because it
sustained the life of the body. Natural immortality without
holiness would have been unending misery. Sinful man was therefore
shut out from the tree of life, till he could be prepared for it
by God’s righteousness. Redemption and resurrection not only
restore that which was lost, but give what man was originally
created to attain: _1 Cor. 15:45_—“_The first man Adam became a
living soul. The last man Adam became a life-giving spirit_”;
_Rev. 22:14_—“_Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they
may have the right to come to the tree of life._”

The conclusions we have thus reached with regard to the incidents of man’s
original state are combated upon two distinct grounds:

1st. The facts bearing upon man’s prehistoric condition point to a
development from primitive savagery to civilization. Among these facts may
be mentioned the succession of implements and weapons from stone to bronze
and iron; the polyandry and communal marriage systems of the lowest
tribes; the relics of barbarous customs still prevailing among the most
civilized.

For the theory of an originally savage condition of man, see Sir
John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, and Origin of Civilization: “The
primitive condition of mankind was one of utter barbarism”; but
especially L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, who divides human
progress into three great periods, the savage, the barbarian, and
the civilized. Each of the two former has three states, as
follows: I. Savage: 1. Lowest state, marked by attainment of
speech and subsistence upon roots. 2. Middle state, marked by
fish-food and fire. 3. Upper state, marked by use of the bow and
hunting. II. Barbarian: 1. Lower state, marked by invention and
use of pottery. 2. Middle state, marked by use of domestic
animals, maize, and building stone. 3. Upper state, marked by
invention and use of iron tools. III. Civilized man next appears,
with the introduction of the phonetic alphabet and writing. J. S.
Stuart-Glennie, Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1892:844, defines civilization
as “enforced social organization, with written records, and hence
intellectual development and social progress.”

With regard to this view we remark:

(_a_) It is based upon an insufficient induction of facts.—History shows a
law of degeneration supplementing and often counteracting the tendency to
development. In the earliest times of which we have any record, we find
nations in a high state of civilization; but in the case of every nation
whose history runs back of the Christian era—as for example, the Romans,
the Greeks, the Egyptians—the subsequent progress has been downward, and
no nation is known to have recovered from barbarism except as the result
of influence from without.

Lubbock seems to admit that cannibalism was not primeval; yet he
shows a general tendency to take every brutal custom as a sample
of man’s first state. And this, in spite of the fact that many
such customs have been the result of corruption. Bride-catching,
for example, could not possibly have been primeval, in the strict
sense of that term. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:48, presents a far
more moderate view. He favors a theory of development, but with
degeneration “as a secondary action largely and deeply affecting
the development of civilization.” So the Duke of Argyll, Unity of
Nature: “Civilization and savagery are both the results of
evolutionary development; but the one is a development in the
upward, the latter in the downward direction; and for this reason,
neither civilization nor savagery can rationally be looked upon as
the primitive condition of man.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:467—“As
plausible an argument might be constructed out of the
deterioration and degradation of some of the human family to prove
that man may have evolved downward into an anthropoid ape, as that
which has been constructed to prove that he has been evolved
upward from one.”

Modern nations fall far short of the old Greek perception and
expression of beauty. Modern Egyptians, Bushmen, Australians, are
unquestionably degenerate races. See Lankester, Degeneration. The
same is true of Italians and Spaniards, as well as of Turks.
Abyssinians are now polygamists, though their ancestors were
Christians and monogamists. The physical degeneration of portions
of the population of Ireland is well known. See Mivart, Lessons
from Nature, 146-160, who applies to the savage-theory the tests
of language, morals, and religion, and who quotes Herbert Spencer
as saying: “Probably most of them [savages], if not all of them,
had ancestors in higher states, and among their beliefs remain
some which were evolved during those higher states.... It is quite
possible, and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has
been as frequent as progression.” Spencer, however, denies that
savagery is always caused by lapse from civilization.

Bib. Sac., 6:715; 29:282—“Man as a moral being does not tend to
rise but to fall, and that with a geometric progress, except he be
elevated and sustained by some force from without and above
himself. While man once civilized may advance, yet moral ideas are
apparently never developed from within.” Had savagery been man’s
primitive condition, he never could have emerged. See Whately,
Origin of Civilization, who maintains that man needed not only a
divine Creator, but a divine Instructor. Seelye, Introd. to A
Century of Dishonor, 3—“The first missionaries to the Indians in
Canada took with them skilled laborers to teach the savages how to
till their fields, to provide them with comfortable homes,
clothing, and food. But the Indians preferred their wigwams,
skins, raw flesh, and filth. Only as Christian influences taught
the Indian his inner need, and how this was to be supplied, was he
led to wish and work for the improvement of his outward condition
and habits. Civilization does not reproduce itself. It must first
be kindled, and it can then be kept alive only by a power
genuinely Christian.” So Wallace, in Nature, Sept. 7, 1876, vol.
14:408-412.

Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 149-168, shows that
evolution does not necessarily involve development as regards
particular races. There is degeneration in all the organic orders.
As regards man, he may be evolving in some directions, while in
others he has degenerated. Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the
Atonement, 245, speaks of “Prof. Clifford as pointing to the
history of human progress and declaring that mankind is a risen
and not a fallen race. There is no real contradiction between
these two views. God has not let man go because man has rebelled
against him. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” The
humanity which was created in Christ and which is upheld by his
power has ever received reinforcements of its physical and mental
life, in spite of its moral and spiritual deterioration. “Some
shrimps, by the adjustment of their bodily parts, go onward to the
higher structure of the lobsters and crabs; while others, taking
up the habit of dwelling in the gills of fishes, sink downward
into a state closely resembling that of the worms.” Drummond,
Ascent of Man: “When a boy’s kite comes down in our garden, we do
not hold that it originally came from the clouds. So nations went
up, before they came down. There is a national gravitation. The
stick age preceded the stone age, but has been lost.” Tennyson:
“Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, And Reversion ever
dragging Evolution in the mud.” Evolution often becomes
devolution, if not devilution. A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the
Spirit, 104—“The Jordan is the fitting symbol of our natural life,
rising in a lofty elevation, and from pure springs, but plunging
steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which
there is no outlet.”

(_b_) Later investigations have rendered it probable that the stone age of
some localities was contemporaneous with the bronze and iron ages of
others, while certain tribes and nations, instead of making progress from
one to the other, were never, so far back as we can trace them, without
the knowledge and use of the metals. It is to be observed, moreover, that
even without such knowledge and use man is not necessarily a barbarian,
though he may be a child.

On the question whether the arts of civilization can be lost, see
Arthur Mitchell, Past in the Present, 219: Rude art is often the
debasement of a higher, instead of being the earlier; the rudest
art in a nation may coëxist with the highest; cave-life may
accompany high civilization. Illustrations from modern Scotland,
where burial of a cock for epilepsy, and sacrifice of a bull, were
until very recently extant. Certain arts have unquestionably been
lost, as glass-making and iron-working in Assyria (see Mivart,
referred to above). The most ancient men do not appear to have
been inferior to the latest, either physically or intellectually.
Rawlinson: “The explorers who have dug deep into the Mesopotamian
mounds, and have ransacked the tombs of Egypt, have come upon no
certain traces of savage man in those regions which a wide-spread
tradition makes the cradle of the human race.” The Tyrolese
peasants show that a rude people may be moral, and a very simple
people may be highly intelligent. See Southall, Recent Origin of
Man, 386-449; Schliemann, Troy and her Remains, 274.

Mason, Origins of Invention, 110, 124, 128—“There is no evidence
that a stone age ever existed in some regions. In Africa, Canada,
and perhaps Michigan, the metal age was as old as the stone age.”
An illustration of the mathematical powers of the savage is given
by Rev. A. E. Hunt in an account of the native arithmetic of
Murray Islands, Torres Straits. “Netat” (one) and “neis” (two) are
the only numerals, higher numbers being described by combinations
of these, as “neis-netat” for three, “neis-i-neis” for four, etc.,
or by reference to one of the fingers, elbows or other parts of
the body. A total of thirty-one could be counted by the latter
method. Beyond this all numbers were “many,” as this was the limit
reached in counting before the introduction of English numerals,
now in general use in the islands.

Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 171—“It is commonly supposed
that the direction of the movement [in the variation of species]
is ever upward. The fact is on the contrary that in a large number
of cases, perhaps in the aggregate in more than half, the change
gives rise to a form which, by all the canons by which we
determine relative rank, is to be regarded as regressive or
degradational.... Species, genera, families, and orders have all,
like the individuals of which they are composed, a period of decay
in which the gain won by infinite toil and pains is altogether
lost in the old age of the group.” Shaler goes on to say that in
the matter of variation successes are to failures as 1 to 100,000,
and if man be counted the solitary distinguished success, then the
proportion is something like 1 to 100,000,000. No species that
passes away is ever reinstated. If man were now to disappear,
there is no reason to believe that by any process of change a
similar creature would be evolved, however long the animal kingdom
continued to exist. The use of these successive chances to produce
man is inexplicable except upon the hypothesis of an infinite
designing Wisdom.

(_c_) The barbarous customs to which this view looks for support may
better be explained as marks of broken-down civilization than as relics of
a primitive and universal savagery. Even if they indicated a former state
of barbarism, that state might have been itself preceded by a condition of
comparative culture.

Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Rev. Sept., 1882:194—“There is no cruel
treatment of females among animals. If man came from the lower
animals, then he cannot have been originally savage; for you find
the most of this cruel treatment among savages.” Tylor instances
“street Arabs.” He compares street Arabs to a ruined house, but
savage tribes to a builder’s yard. See Duke of Argyll, Primeval
Man, 129, 133; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 223;
McLennan, Studies in Ancient History. Gulick, in Bib. Sac., July,
1892:517—“Cannibalism and infanticide are unknown among the
anthropoid apes. These must be the results of degradation. Pirates
and slavetraders are not men of low and abortive intelligence, but
men of education who deliberately throw off all restraint, and who
use their powers for the destruction of society.”

Keane, Man, Past and Present, 40, quotes Sir H. H. Johnston, an
administrator who has had a wider experience of the natives of
Africa than any man living, as saying that “the tendency of the
negro for several centuries past has been an actual retrograde
one—return toward the savage and even the brute. If he had been
cut off from the immigration of the Arab and the European, the
purely Negroid races, left to themselves, so far from advancing
towards a higher type of humanity, might have actually reverted by
degrees to a type no longer human.” Ratzel’s History of Mankind:
“We assign no great antiquity to Polynesian civilization. In New
Zealand it is a matter of only some centuries back. In newly
occupied territories, the development of the population began upon
a higher level and then fell off. The Maoris’ decadence resulted
in the rapid impoverishment of culture, and the character of the
people became more savage and cruel. Captain Cook found objects of
art worshiped by the descendants of those who produced them.”

Recent researches have entirely discredited L. H. Morgan’s theory
of an original brutal promiscuity of the human race. Ritchie,
Darwin and Hegel, 6, note—“The theory of an original promiscuity
is rendered extremely doubtful by the habits of many of the higher
animals.” E. B. Tylor, in 19th Century, July, 1906—“A sort of
family life, lasting for the sake of the young, beyond a single
pairing season, exists among the higher manlike apes. The male
gorilla keeps watch and ward over his progeny. He is the antetype
of the house-father. The matriarchal system is a later device for
political reasons, to bind together in peace and alliance tribes
that would otherwise be hostile. But it is an artificial system
introduced as a substitute for and in opposition to the natural
paternal system. When the social pressure is removed, the
maternalized husband emancipates himself, and paternalism begins.”
Westermarck, History of Human Marriage: “Marriage and the family
are thus intimately connected with one another; it is for the
benefit of the young that male and female continue to live
together. Marriage is therefore rooted in the family, rather than
the family in marriage.... There is not a shred of genuine
evidence for the notion that promiscuity ever formed a general
stage in the social history of mankind. The hypothesis of
promiscuity, instead of belonging to the class of hypotheses which
are scientifically permissible, has no real foundation, and is
essentially unscientific.” Howard, History of Matrimonial
Institutions: “Marriage or pairing between one man and one woman,
though the union be often transitory and the rule often violated,
is the typical form of sexual union from the infancy of the human
race.”

(_d_) The well-nigh universal tradition of a golden age of virtue and
happiness may be most easily explained upon the Scripture view of an
actual creation of the race in holiness and its subsequent apostasy.

For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt,
Compendium der Dogmatik, 115; Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion,
1:205—“In Hesiod we have the legend of a golden age under the
lordship of Chronos, when man was free from cares and toils, in
untroubled youth and cheerfulness, with a superabundance of the
gifts which the earth furnished of itself; the race was indeed not
immortal, but it experienced death even as a soft sleep.” We may
add that capacity for religious truth depends upon moral
conditions. Very early races therefore have a purer faith than the
later ones. Increasing depravity makes it harder for the later
generations to exercise faith. The wisdom-literature may have been
very early instead of very late, just as monotheistic ideas are
clearer the further we go back. Bixby, Crisis in Morals,
171—“Precisely because such tribes [Australian and African
savages] have been deficient in average moral quality, have they
failed to march upward on the road of civilization with the rest
of mankind, and have fallen into these bog holes of savage
degradation.” On petrified civilizations, see Henry George,
Progress and Poverty, 433-439—“The law of human progress, what is
it but the moral law?” On retrogressive development in nature, see
Weismann, Heredity, 2:1-30. But see also Mary E. Case, “Did the
Romans Degenerate?” in Internat. Journ. Ethics. Jan. 1893:165-182,
in which it is maintained that the Romans made constant advances
rather. Henry Sumner Maine calls the Bible the most important
single document in the history of sociology, because it exhibits
authentically the early development of society from the family,
through the tribe, into the nation,—a progress learned only by
glimpses, intervals, and survivals of old usages in the literature
of other nations.

2nd. That the religious history of mankind warrants us in inferring a
necessary and universal law of progress, in accordance with which man
passes from fetichism to polytheism and monotheism,—this first theological
stage, of which fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism are parts, being
succeeded by the metaphysical stage, and that in turn by the positive.

This theory is propounded by Comte, in his Positive Philosophy,
English transl., 25, 26, 515-636—“Each branch of our knowledge
passes successively through three different theoretical
conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or
abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.... The first is the
necessary point of departure of the human understanding; and the
third is its fixed and definite state. The second is merely a
state of transition. In the theological state, the human mind,
seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final
causes, the origin and purpose, of all effects—in short, absolute
knowledge—supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate
action of supernatural beings. In the metaphysical state, which is
only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of
supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities, that is,
personified abstractions, inherent in all beings, and capable of
producing all phenomena. What is called the explanation of
phenomena is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its
proper entity. In the final, the positive state, the mind has
given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and
destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and
applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their
invariable relations of succession and resemblance.... The
theological system arrived at its highest perfection when it
substituted the providential action of a single Being for the
varied operations of numerous divinities. In the last stage of the
metaphysical system, men substituted one great entity, Nature, as
the cause of all phenomena, instead of the multitude of entities
at first supposed. In the same way the ultimate perfection of the
positive system would be to represent all phenomena as particular
aspects of a single general fact—such as Gravitation, for
instance.”

This assumed law of progress, however, is contradicted by the following
facts:

(_a_) Not only did the monotheism of the Hebrews precede the great
polytheistic systems of antiquity, but even these heathen religions are
purer from polytheistic elements, the further back we trace them; so that
the facts point to an original monotheistic basis for them all.

The gradual deterioration of all religions, apart from special
revelation and influence from God, is proof that the purely
evolutionary theory is defective. The most natural supposition is
that of a primitive revelation, which little by little receded
from human memory. In Japan, Shinto was originally the worship of
Heaven. The worship of the dead, the deification of the Mikado,
etc., were a corruption and aftergrowth. The Mikado’s ancestors,
instead of coming from heaven, came from Korea. Shinto was
originally a form of monotheism. Not one of the first emperors was
deified after death. Apotheosis of the Mikados dated from the
corruption of Shinto through the importation of Buddhism. Andrew
Lang, in his Making of Religion, advocates primitive monotheism.
T. G. Pinches, of the British Museum, 1894, declares that, as in
the earliest Egyptian, so in the early Babylonian records, there
is evidence of a primitive monotheism. Nevins, Demon-Possession,
170-173, quotes W. A. P. Martin, President of the Peking
University, as follows: “China, India, Egypt and Greece all agree
in the monotheistic type of their early religion. The Orphic
Hymns, long before the advent of the popular divinities,
celebrated the _Pantheos_, the universal God. The odes compiled by
Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the Supreme
Ruler. The Vedas speak of ‘one unknown true Being, all-present,
all-powerful, the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the
Universe.’ And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there
were still vestiges of a monotheistic worship.”

On the evidences of an original monotheism, see Max Müller, Chips,
1:337; Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, 2: no. 11; Legge,
Religions of China, 8, 11; Diestel, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5:669; Philip Smith, Anc. Hist. of East,
65, 195; Warren, on the Earliest Creed of Mankind, in the Meth.
Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884.

(_b_) “There is no proof that the Indo-Germanic or Semitic stocks ever
practiced fetich worship, or were ever enslaved by the lowest types of
mythological religion, or ascended from them to somewhat higher” (Fisher).

See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 545;
Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 36-115. Herbert
Spencer once held that fetichism was primordial. But he afterwards
changed his mind, and said that the facts proved to be exactly the
opposite when he had become better acquainted with the ideas of
savages; see his Principles of Sociology, 1:343. Mr. Spencer
finally traced the beginnings of religion to the worship of
ancestors. But in China no ancestor has ever become a god; see
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 304-313. And unless man had an inborn
sense of divinity, he could deify neither ancestors nor ghosts.
Professor Hilprecht of Philadelphia says: “As the attempt has
recently been made to trace the pure monotheism of Israel to
Babylonian sources, I am bound to declare this an absolute
impossibility, on the basis of my fourteen years’ researches in
Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions. The faith of Israel’s chosen
people is: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.’ And
this faith could never have proceeded from the Babylonian mountain
of gods, that charnel-house full of corruption and dead men’s
bones.”

(_c_) Some of the earliest remains of man yet found show, by the burial of
food and weapons with the dead, that there already existed the idea of
spiritual beings and of a future state, and therefore a religion of a
higher sort than fetichism.

Idolatry proper regards the idol as the symbol and representative
of a spiritual being who exists apart from the material object,
though he manifests himself through it. Fetichism, however,
identifies the divinity with the material thing, and worships the
stock or stone; spirit is not conceived of as existing apart from
body. Belief in spiritual beings and a future state is therefore
proof of a religion higher in kind than fetichism. See Lyell,
Antiquity of Man, quoted in Dawson, Story of Earth and Man, 384;
see also 368, 372, 386—“Man’s capacities for degradation are
commensurate with his capacities for improvement” (Dawson). Lyell,
in his last edition, however, admits the evidence from the
Aurignac cave to be doubtful. See art. by Dawkins, in Nature,
4:208.

(_d_) The theory in question, in making theological thought a merely
transient stage of mental evolution, ignores the fact that religion has
its root in the intuitions and yearnings of the human soul, and that
therefore no philosophical or scientific progress can ever abolish it.
While the terms theological, metaphysical, and positive may properly mark
the order in which the ideas of the individual and the race are acquired,
positivism errs in holding that these three phases of thought are mutually
exclusive, and that upon the rise of the later the earlier must of
necessity become extinct.

John Stuart Mill suggests that “personifying” would be a much
better term than “theological” to designate the earliest efforts
to explain physical phenomena. On the fundamental principles of
Positivism, see New Englander, 1873:323-386; Diman, Theistic
Argument, 338—“Three coëxistent states are here confounded with
three successive stages of human thought; three aspects of things
with three epochs of time. Theology, metaphysics, and science must
always exist side by side, for all positive science rests on
metaphysical principles, and theology lies behind both. All are as
permanent as human reason itself.” Martineau, Types, 1:487—“Comte
sets up mediæval Christianity as the typical example of evolved
monotheism, and develops it out of the Greek and Roman polytheism
which it overthrew and dissipated. But the religion of modern
Europe notoriously does not descend from the same source as its
civilization and is no continuation of the ancient culture,”—it
comes rather from Hebrew sources; Essays, Philos. and Theol.,
1:24, 62—“The Jews were always a disobliging people; what business
had they to be up so early in the morning, disturbing the house
ever so long before M. Comte’s bell rang to prayers?” See also
Gillett, God in Human Thought, 1:17-23; Rawlinson, in Journ.
Christ. Philos., April, 1883:353; Nineteenth Century, Oct.
1886:473-490.

Chapter III. Sin, Or Man’s State Of Apostasy.

Section I.—The Law Of God.

As preliminary to a treatment of man’s state of apostasy, it becomes
necessary to consider the nature of that law of God, the transgression of
which is sin. We may best approach the subject by inquiring what is the
true conception of

I. Law in General.

1. Law is an expression of _will_.

The essential idea of law is that of a general expression of will enforced
by power. It implies: (_a_) A lawgiver, or authoritative will. (_b_)
Subjects, or beings upon whom this will terminates. (_c_) A general
command, or expression of this will. (_d_) A power, enforcing the command.

These elements are found even in what we call natural law. The phrase “law
of nature” involves a self-contradiction, when used to denote a mode of
action or an order of sequence behind which there is conceived to be no
intelligent and ordaining will. Physics derives the term “law” from
jurisprudence, instead of jurisprudence deriving it from physics. It is
first used of the relations of voluntary agents. Causation in our own
wills enables us to see something besides mere antecedence and consequence
in the world about us. Physical science, in her very use of the word
“law,” implicitly confesses that a supreme Will has set general rules
which control the processes of the universe.

Wayland, Moral Science, 1, unwisely defines law as “a mode of
existence or order of sequence,” thus leaving out of his
definition all reference to an ordaining will. He subsequently
says that law presupposes an establisher, but in his definition
there is nothing to indicate this. We insist, on the other hand,
that the term “law” itself includes the idea of force and cause.
The word “law” is from “lay” (German _legen_),—something laid
down; German _Gesetz_, from _setzen_,—something set or
established; Greek νόμος, from νέμω,—something assigned or
apportioned; Latin _lex_, from _lego_,—something said or spoken.

All these derivations show that man’s original conception of law
is that of something proceeding from volition. Lewes, in his
Problems of Life and Mind, says that the term “law” is so
suggestive of a giver and impresser of law, that it ought to be
dropped, and the word “method” substituted. The merit of Austin’s
treatment of the subject is that he “rigorously limits the term
‘law’ to the commands of a superior”; see John Austin, Province of
Jurisprudence, 1:88-93, 220-223. The defects of his treatment we
shall note further on.

J. S. Mill: “It is the custom, wherever they [scientific men] can
trace regularity of any kind, to call the general proposition
which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when in
mathematics we speak of the law of the successive terms of a
converging series. But the expression ‘law of nature’ is generally
employed by scientific men with a sort of tacit reference to the
original sense of the word ‘law,’ namely, the expression of the
will of a superior—the superior in this case being the Ruler of
the universe.” Paley, Nat. Theology, chap. 1—“It is a perversion
of language to assign any _law_ as the efficient operative cause
of anything. A law presupposes an agent; this is only the mode
according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it
is the order according to which that power acts. Without this
agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself,
the law does nothing.” “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” “Rules do
not fulfill themselves, any more than a statute-book can quell a
riot” (Martineau, Types, 1:367).

Charles Darwin got the suggestion of natural selection, not from
the study of lower plants and animals, but from Malthus on
Population; see his Life and Letters, Vol. I, autobiographical
chapter. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:248-252—“The
conception of natural law rests upon the analogy of civil law.”
Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 333—“Laws are only the more or less
frequently repeated and uniform modes of the behavior of things”;
Philosophy of Mind, 122—“To be, to stand in relation, to be
self-active, to act upon other being, to obey law, to be a cause,
to be a permanent subject of states, to be the same to-day as
yesterday, to be identical, to be one,—all these and all similar
conceptions, together with the proofs that they are valid for real
beings, are affirmed of physical realities, or projected into
them, only on a basis of self-knowledge, envisaging and affirming
the reality of mind. Without psychological insight and
philosophical training, such terms or their equivalents are
meaningless in physics. And because writers on physics do not in
general have this insight and this training, in spite of their
utmost endeavors to treat physics as an empirical science without
metaphysics, they flounder and blunder and contradict themselves
hopelessly whenever they touch upon fundamental matters.” See
President McGarvey’s Criticism on James Lane Allen’s Reign of Law:
“It is not in the nature of law to reign. To reign is an act which
can be literally affirmed only of persons. A man may reign; a God
may reign; a devil may reign; but a law cannot reign. If a law
could reign, we should have no gambling in New York and no open
saloons on Sunday. There would be no false swearing in courts of
justice, and no dishonesty in politics. It is men who reign in
these matters—the judges, the grand jury, the sheriff and the
police. They may reign according to law. Law cannot reign even
over those who are appointed to execute the law.”

2. Law is a _general_ expression of will.

The characteristic of law is generality. It is addressed to substances or
persons in classes. Special legislation is contrary to the true theory of
law.

When the Sultan of Zanzibar orders his barber to be beheaded
because the latter has cut his master, this order is not properly
a law. To be a law it must read: “Every barber who cuts his
majesty shall thereupon be decapitated.” _Einmal ist keinmal_ =
“Once is no custom.” Dr. Schurman suggests that the word _meal_
(Mahl) means originally _time_ (_mal_ in _einmal_). The
measurement of time among ourselves is astronomical; among our
earliest ancestors it was gastronomical, and the reduplication
_mealtime_ = the ding-dong of the dinner bell. The Shah of Persia
once asked the Prince of Wales to have a man put to death in order
that he might see the English method of execution. When the Prince
told him that this was beyond his power, the Shah wished to know
what was the use of being a king if he could not kill people at
his pleasure. Peter the Great suggested a way out of the
difficulty. He desired to see keelhauling. When informed that
there was no sailor liable to that penalty, he replied: “That does
not matter,—take one of my suite.” Amos, Science of Law, 33,
34—“Law eminently deals in general rules.” It knows not persons or
personality. It must apply to more than one case. “The
characteristic of law is generality, as that of morality is
individual application.” Special legislation is the bane of good
government; it does not properly fall within the province of the
law-making power; it savors of the caprice of despotism, which
gives commands to each subject at will. Hence our more advanced
political constitutions check lobby influence and bribery, by
prohibiting special legislation in all cases where general laws
already exist.

3. Law implies _power to enforce_.

It is essential to the existence of law, that there be power to enforce.
Otherwise law becomes the expression of mere wish or advice. Since
physical substances and forces have no intelligence and no power to
resist, the four elements already mentioned exhaust the implications of
the term “law” as applied to nature. In the case of rational and free
agents, however, law implies in addition: (_e_) Duty or obligation to
obey; and (_f_) Sanctions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.

“Law that has no penalty is not law but advice, and the government
in which infliction does not follow transgression is the reign of
rogues or demons.” On the question whether any of the punishments
of civil law are legal sanctions, except the punishment of death,
see N. W. Taylor, Moral Govt., 2:367-387. Rewards are motives, but
they are not sanctions. Since public opinion may be conceived of
as inflicting penalties for violation of her will, we speak
figuratively of the laws of society, of fashion, of etiquette, of
honor. Only so far as the community of nations can and does by
sanctions compel obedience, can we with propriety assert the
existence of international law. Even among nations, however, there
may be moral as well as physical sanctions. The decision of an
international tribunal has the same sanction as a treaty, and if
the former is impotent, the latter also is. Fines and imprisonment
do not deter decent people from violations of law half so
effectively as do the social penalties of ostracism and disgrace,
and it will be the same with the findings of an international
tribunal. Diplomacy without ships and armies has been said to be
law without penalty. But exclusion from civilized society is
penalty. “In the unquestioning obedience to fashion’s decrees, to
which we all quietly submit, we are simply yielding to the
pressure of the persons about us. No one adopts a style of dress
because it is reasonable, for the styles are often most
unreasonable; but we meekly yield to the most absurd of them
rather than resist this force and be called eccentric. So what we
call public opinion is the most mighty power to-day known, whether
in society or in politics.”

4. Law expresses and demands _nature_.

The will which thus binds its subjects by commands and penalties is an
expression of the nature of the governing power, and reveals the normal
relations of the subjects to that power. Finally, therefore, law (_g_) Is
an expression of the nature of the lawgiver; and (_h_) Sets forth the
condition or conduct in the subjects which is requisite for harmony with
that nature. Any so-called law which fails to represent the nature of the
governing power soon becomes obsolete. All law that is permanent is a
transcript of the facts of being, a discovery of what is and must be, in
order to harmony between the governing and the governed; in short,
positive law is just and lasting only as it is an expression and
republication of the law of nature.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 106, 107: John Austin, although he
“rigorously limited the term law to the commands of a superior,”
yet “rejected Ulpian’s explanation of the law of nature, and
ridiculed as fustian the celebrated description in Hooker.” This
we conceive to be the radical defect of Austin’s conception. The
Will from which natural law proceeds is conceived of after a
deistic fashion, instead of being immanent in the universe.
Lightwood, in his Nature of Positive Law, 78-90, criticizes
Austin’s definition of law as command, and substitutes the idea of
law as custom. Sir Henry Maine’s Ancient Law has shown us that the
early village communities had customs which only gradually took
form as definite laws. But we reply that custom is not the
ultimate source of anything. Repeated acts of will are necessary
to constitute custom. The first customs are due to the commanding
will of the father in the patriarchal family. So Austin’s
definition is justified. Collective morals (_mores_) come from
individual duty (_due_); law originates in will; Martineau, Types,
2:18, 19. Behind this will, however, is something which Austin
does not take account of, namely, the nature of things as
constituted by God, as revealing the universal Reason, and as
furnishing the standard to which all positive law, if it would be
permanent, must conform.

See Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, book 1, sec. 14—“Laws are the
necessary relations arising from the nature of things.... There is
a primitive Reason, and laws are the relations subsisting between
it and different beings, and the relations of these to one
another.... These rules are a fixed and invariable relation....
Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making,
but they have some likewise that they never made.... To say that
there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden
by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing
of a circle all the radii were not equal. We must therefore
acknowledge relations antecedent to the positive law by which they
were established.” Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 169-172—“By the
science of law is meant systematic knowledge of the principles of
the law of nature—from which positive law takes its rise—which is
forever the same, and carries its sure and unchanging obligations
over all nations and throughout all ages.”

It is true even of a despot’s law, that it reveals his nature, and
shows what is requisite in the subject to constitute him in
harmony with that nature. A law which does not represent the
nature of things, or the real relations of the governor and the
governed, has only a nominal existence, and cannot be permanent.
On the definition and nature of law, see also Pomeroy, in
Johnson’s Encyclopædia, art.: Law; Ahrens, Cours de Droit Naturel,
book 1, sec. 14; Lorimer, Institutes of Law, 256, who quotes from
Burke: “All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory.
They may alter the mode and application, but have no power over
the substance of original justice”; Lord Bacon: “Regula enim legem
(ut acus nautica polos) indicat, non statuit.” Duke of Argyll,
Reign of Law, 64; H. C. Carey, Unity of Law.

Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., Apl. 1895:473—“The Roman jurists draw
a distinction between _jus naturale_ and _jus civile_, and they
used the former to affect the latter. The _jus civile_ was
statutory, established and fixed law, as it were, the actual legal
environment; the _jus naturale_ was ideal, the principle of
justice and equity immanent in man, yet with the progress of his
ethical culture growing ever more articulate.” We add the fact
that _jus_ in Latin and _Recht_ in German have ceased to mean
merely abstract right, and have come to denote the legal system in
which that abstract right is embodied and expressed. Here we have
a proof that Christ is gradually moralizing the world and
translating law into life. E. G. Robinson: “Never a government on
earth made its own laws. Even constitutions simply declare laws
already and actually existing. Where society falls into anarchy,
the _lex talionis_ becomes the prevailing principle.”

II. The Law of God in Particular.

The law of God is a general expression of the divine will enforced by
power. It has two forms: Elemental Law and Positive Enactment.

1. _Elemental Law_, or law inwrought into the elements, substances, and
forces of the rational and irrational creation. This is twofold:

A. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of the material
universe;—this we call physical, or natural law. Physical law is not
necessary. Another order of things is conceivable. Physical order is not
an end in itself; it exists for the sake of moral order. Physical order
has therefore only a relative constancy, and God supplements it at times
by miracle.

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 210—“The laws of nature
represent no necessity, but are only the orderly forms of
procedure of some Being back of them.... Cosmic uniformities are
God’s methods in freedom.” Philos. of Theism, 73—“Any of the
cosmic laws, from gravitation on, might conceivably have been
lacking or altogether different.... No trace of necessity can be
found in the Cosmos or in its laws.” Seth, Hegelianism and
Personality: “Nature is not necessary. Why put an island where it
is, and not a mile east or west? Why connect the smell and shape
of the rose, or the taste and color of the orange? Why do H2O form
water? No one knows.” William James: “The parts seem shot at us
out of a pistol.” Rather, we would say, out of a shotgun.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 33—“Why undulations in one medium
should produce sound, and in another light; why one speed of
vibration should give red color, and another blue, can be
explained by no reason of necessity. Here is selecting will.”

Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 126—“So far as the philosophy of
evolution involves belief that nature is determinate, or due to a
necessary law of universal progress or evolution, it seems to me
to be utterly unsupported by evidence and totally unscientific.”
There is no power to deduce anything whatever from homogeneity.
Press the button and law does the rest? Yes, but what presses the
button? The solution crystalises when shaken? Yes, but what shakes
it? Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge, 310—“The directions and velocities
of the stars fall under no common principles that astronomy can
discover. One of the stars—‘1830 Groombridge’—is flying through
space at a rate many times as great as it could attain if it had
fallen through infinite space through all eternity toward the
entire physical universe.... Fluids contract when cooled and
expand when heated,—yet there is the well known exception of water
at the degree of freezing.” 263—“Things do not appear to be
mathematical all the way through. The system of things may be a
Life, changing its modes of manifestation according to immanent
ideas, rather than a collection of rigid entities, blindly subject
in a mechanical way to unchanging laws.”

Augustine: “Dei voluntas rerum natura est.” Joseph Cook: “The laws
of nature are the habits of God.” But Campbell, Atonement,
Introd., xxvi, says there is this difference between the laws of
the moral universe and those of the physical, namely, that we do
not trace the existence of the former to an act of will, as we do
the latter. “To say that God has given existence to goodness, as
he has to the laws of nature, would be equivalent to saying that
he has given existence to himself.” Pepper, Outlines of Syst.
Theol., 91—“Moral law, unlike natural law, is a standard of action
to be adopted or rejected in the exercise of rational freedom, _i.
e._, of moral agency.” See also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:531.

Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept. 1882:190—“In moral law
there is enforcement by punishment only—never by power, for this
would confound moral law with physical, and obedience can never be
produced or secured by power. In physical law, on the contrary,
enforcement is wholly by power, and punishment is impossible. So
far as man is free, he is not subject to law at all, in its
physical sense. Our wills are free _from_ law, as enforced by
_power_; but are free _under_ law, as enforced by _punishment_.
Where law prevails in the same sense as in the material world,
there can be no freedom. Law does not prevail when we reach the
region of choice. We hold to a power in the mind of man
originating a free choice. Two objects or courses of action,
between which choice is to be made, are presupposed: (1) A
uniformity or set of uniformities implying a force by which the
uniformity is produced [physical or natural law]; (2) A command,
addressed to free and intelligent beings, that can be obeyed or
disobeyed, and that has connected with it rewards or punishments”
[moral law]. See also Wm. Arthur, Difference between Physical and
Moral Law.

B. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of rational and
free agents;—this we call moral law. This elemental law of our moral
nature, with which only we are now concerned, has all the characteristics
mentioned as belonging to law in general. It implies: (_a_) A divine
Law-giver, or ordaining Will. (_b_) Subjects, or moral beings upon whom
the law terminates. (_c_) General command, or expression of this will in
the moral constitution of the subjects. (_d_) Power, enforcing the
command. (_e_) Duty, or obligation to obey. (_f_) Sanctions, or pains and
penalties for disobedience.

All these are of a loftier sort than are found in human law. But we need
especially to emphasize the fact that this law (_g_) Is an expression of
the moral nature of God, and therefore of God’s holiness, the fundamental
attribute of that nature; and that it (_h_) Sets forth absolute conformity
to that holiness, as the normal condition of man. This law is inwrought
into man’s rational and moral being. Man fulfills it, only when in his
moral as well as his rational being he is the image of God.

Although the will from which the moral law springs is an
expression of the nature of God, and a necessary expression of
that nature in view of the existence of moral beings, it is none
the less a personal will. We should be careful not to attribute to
law a personality of its own. When Plutarch says: “Law is king
both of mortal and immortal beings,” and when we say: “The law
will take hold of you,” “The criminal is in danger of the law,” we
are simply substituting the name of the agent for that of the
principal. God is not subject to law; God is the source of law;
and we may say: “If Jehovah be God, worship him; but if Law,
worship it.”

Since moral law merely reflects God, it is not a thing _made_. Men
_discover_ laws, but they do not _make_ them, any more than the
chemist makes the laws by which the elements combine. Instance the
solidification of hydrogen at Geneva. Utility does not constitute
law, although we test law by utility; see Murphy, Scientific Bases
of Faith, 58-71. The true nature of the moral law is set forth in
the noble though rhetorical description of Hooker (Eccl. Pol.,
1:194)—“Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her
seat is in the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world;
all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as
feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power;
both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever,
though each in a different sort and manner, yet all with uniform
consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.” See
also Martineau, Types, 2:119, and Study, 1:35.

Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religions, 66, 101—“The Oriental
believes that God makes right by edict. Saladin demonstrated to
Henry of Champagne the loyalty of his Assassins, by commanding two
of them to throw themselves down from a lofty tower to certain and
violent death.” H. B. Smith, System, 192—“Will implies
personality, and personality adds to abstract truth and duty the
element of authority. Law therefore has the force that a person
has over and above that of an idea.” Human law forbids only those
offences which constitute a breach of public order or of private
right. God’s law forbids all that is an offence against the divine
order, that is, all that is unlike God. The whole law may be
summed up in the words: “Be like God.” Salter, First Steps in
Philosophy, 101-126—“The realization of the nature of each being
is the end to be striven for. Self-realization is an ideal end,
not of one being, but of each being, with due regard to the value
of each in the proper scale of worth. The beast can be sacrificed
for man. All men are sacred as capable of unlimited progress. It
is our duty to realize the capacities of our nature so far as they
are consistent with one another and go to make up one whole.” This
means that man fulfills the law only as he realizes the divine
idea in his character and life, or, in other words, as he becomes
a finite image of God’s infinite perfections.

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 191, 201, 285, 286—“Morality is rooted in
the nature of things. There is a universe. We are all parts of an
infinite organism. Man is inseparably bound to man [and to God].
All rights and duties arise out of this common life. In the
solidarity of social life lies the ground of Kant’s law: So will,
that the maxim of thy conduct may apply to all. The planet cannot
safely fly away from the sun, and the hand cannot safely separate
itself from the heart. It is from the fundamental unity of life
that our duties flow.... The infinite world-organism is the body
and manifestation of God. And when we recognize the solidarity of
our vital being with this divine life and embodiment, we begin to
see into the heart of the mystery, the unquestionable authority
and supreme sanction of duty. Our moral intuitions are simply the
unchanging laws of the universe that have emerged to consciousness
in the human heart.... The inherent principles of the universal
Reason reflect themselves in the mirror of the moral nature....
The enlightened conscience is the expression in the human soul of
the divine Consciousness.... Morality is the victory of the divine
Life in us.... Solidarity of our life with the universal Life
gives it unconditional sacredness and transcendental authority....
The microcosm must bring itself _en rapport_ with the Macrocosm.
Man must bring his spirit into resemblance to the World-essence,
and into union with it.”

The law of God, then, is simply an expression of the nature of God in the
form of moral requirement, and a necessary expression of that nature in
view of the existence of moral beings (Ps. 19:7; _cf._ 1). To the
existence of this law all men bear witness. The consciences even of the
heathen testify to it (Rom. 2:14, 15). Those who have the written law
recognize this elemental law as of greater compass and penetration (Rom.
7:14; 8:4). The perfect embodiment and fulfillment of this law is seen
only in Christ (Rom. 10:4; Phil. 3:8, 9).

_Ps. 19:7_—“_The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul_”;
_cf._ _verse 1_—“_The heavens declare the glory of God_”—two
revelations of God—one in nature, the other in the moral law.
_Rom. 2:14, 15_—“_for when Gentiles that have not the law do by
nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the
law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written
in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and
their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing
them_”—here the “_work of the law_”—, not the ten commandments,
for of these the heathen were ignorant, but rather the work
corresponding to them, _i. e._, the substance of them. _Rom.
7:14_—“_For we know that the law is spiritual_”—this, says Meyer,
is equivalent to saying “its essence is divine, of like nature
with the Holy Spirit who gave it, a holy self-revelation of God.”
_Rom. 8:4_—“_that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit_”;
_10:4_—“_For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to
every one that believeth_”; _Phil. 3:8, 9_—“_that I may gain
Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine
own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith_”;
_Heb. 10:9_—“_Lo, I am come to do thy will._” In Christ “the law
appears Drawn out in living characters.” Just such as he was and
is, we feel that we ought to be. Hence the character of Christ
convicts us of sin, as does no other manifestation of God. See, on
the passages from Romans, the Commentary of Philippi.

Fleming, Vocab. Philos., 286—“Moral laws are derived from the
nature and will of God, and the character and condition of man.”
God’s nature is reflected in the laws of our nature. Since law is
inwrought into man’s nature, man is a law unto himself. To conform
to his own nature, in which conscience is supreme, is to conform
to the nature of God. The law is only the revelation of the
constitutive principles of being, the declaration of what must be,
so long as man is man and God is God. It says in effect: “Be like
God, or you cannot be truly man.” So moral law is not simply a
test of obedience, but is also a revelation of eternal reality.
Man cannot be lost to God, without being lost to himself. “The
‘_hands of the living God_’ (_Heb. 10:31_) into which we fall, are
the laws of nature.” In the spiritual world “the same wheels
revolve, only there is no iron” (Drummond, Natural Law in the
Spiritual World, 27). Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:82-92—“The
totality of created being is to be in harmony with God and with
itself. The idea of this harmony, as active in God under the form
of will, is God’s law.” A manuscript of the U. S. Constitution was
so written that when held at a little distance the shading of the
letters and their position showed the countenance of George
Washington. So the law of God is only God’s face disclosed to
human sight.

R. W. Emerson, Woodnotes, 57—“Conscious Law is King of kings.” Two
centuries ago John Norton wrote a book entitled The Orthodox
Evangelist, “designed for the begetting and establishing of the
faith which is in Jesus,” in which we find the following: “God
doth not will things because they are just, but things are
therefore just because God so willeth them. What reasonable man
but will yield that the being of the moral law hath no necessary
connection with the being of God? That the actions of men not
conformable to this law should be sin, that death should be the
punishment of sin, these are the constitutions of God, proceeding
from him not by way of necessity of nature, but freely, as effects
and products of his eternal good pleasure.” This is to make God an
arbitrary despot. We should not say that God _makes_ law, nor on
the other hand that God _is subject to_ law, but rather that God
_is_ law and _the source_ of law.

Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 161—“God’s law is organic—inwrought into
the constitution of men and things. The chart however does not
make the channel.... A law of nature is never the antecedent but
the consequence of reality. What right has this consequence of
reality to be personalized and made the ruler and source of
reality? Law is only the fixed mode in which reality works. Law
therefore can explain nothing. Only God, from whom reality
springs, can explain reality.” In other words, law is never an
agent but always a method—the method of God, or rather of Christ
who is the only Revealer of God. Christ’s life in the flesh is the
clearest manifestation of him who is the principle of law in the
physical and moral universe. Christ is the Reason of God in
expression. It was he who gave the law on Mount Sinai as well as
in the Sermon on the Mount. For fuller treatment of the subject,
see Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 321-344; Talbot, Ethical
Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274; Whewell, Elements
of Morality, 2:35; and especially E. G. Robinson, Principles and
Practice of Morality, 79-108.

Each of the two last-mentioned characteristics of God’s law is important
in its implications. We treat of these in their order.

First, the law of God as a transcript of the divine nature.—If this be the
nature of the law, then certain common misconceptions of it are excluded.
The law of God is

(_a_) Not arbitrary, or the product of arbitrary will. Since the will from
which the law springs is a revelation of God’s nature, there can be no
rashness or unwisdom in the law itself.

E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 193—“No law of God seems ever to
have been arbitrarily enacted, or simply with a view to certain
ends to be accomplished; it always represented some reality of
life which it was inexorably necessary that those who were to be
regulated should carefully observe.” The theory that law
originates in arbitrary will results in an effeminate type of
piety, just as the theory that legislation has for its sole end
the greatest happiness results in all manner of compromises of
justice. Jones, Robert Browning, 43—“He who cheats his neighbor
believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the supreme
Quack for his god.”

(b) Not temporary, or ordained simply to meet an exigency. The law is a
manifestation, not of temporary moods or desires, but of the essential
nature of God.

The great speech of Sophocles’ Antigone gives us this conception
of law: “The ordinances of the gods are unwritten, but sure. Not
one of them is for to-day or for yesterday alone, but they live
forever.” Moses might break the tables of stone upon which the law
was inscribed, and Jehoiakim might cut up the scroll and cast it
into the fire (_Ex. 32:19_; _Jer. 36:23_), but the law remained
eternal as before in the nature of God and in the constitution of
man. Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch: “The moral laws are just as
stable as the law of gravitation. Every fuzzy human chicken that
is hatched into this world tries to fool with those laws. Some
grow wiser in the process and some do not. We talk about breaking
God’s laws. But after those laws have been broken several billion
times since Adam first tried to play with them, those laws are
still intact and no seam or fracture is visible in them,—not even
a scratch on the enamel. But the lawbreakers—that is another
story. If you want to find their fragments, go to the ruins of
Egypt, of Babylon, of Jerusalem; study statistics; read faces;
keep your eyes open; visit Blackwell’s Island; walk through the
graveyard and read the invisible inscriptions left by the Angel of
Judgment, for instance: ‘Here lie the fragments of John Smith, who
contradicted his Maker, played football with the ten commandments,
and departed this life at the age of thirty-five. His mother and
wife weep for him. Nobody else does. May he rest in peace!’ ”

(_c_) Not merely negative, or a law of mere prohibition,—since positive
conformity to God is the inmost requisition of law.

The negative form of the commandments in the decalogue merely takes for
granted the evil inclination in men’s hearts and practically opposes its
gratification. In the case of each commandment a whole province of the
moral life is taken into the account, although the act expressly forbidden
is the acme of evil in that one province. So the decalogue makes itself
intelligible: it crosses man’s path just where he most feels inclined to
wander. But back of the negative and specific expression in each case lies
the whole mass of moral requirement: the thin edge of the wedge has the
positive demand of holiness behind it, without obedience to which even the
prohibition cannot in spirit be obeyed. Thus “_the law is spiritual_”
(_Rom. 7:14_), and requires likeness in character and life to the
spiritual God; _John 4:24_—“_God is spirit, and they that worship him must
worship in spirit and truth._”

(_d_) Not partial, or addressed to one part only of man’s being,—since
likeness to God requires purity of substance in man’s soul and body, as
well as purity in all the thoughts and acts that proceed therefrom. As law
proceeds from the nature of God, so it requires conformity to that nature
in the nature of man.

Whatever God gave to man at the beginning he requires of man with
interest; _cf._ _Mat. 25:27_—“_thou oughtest therefore to have put
my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received
back mine own with interest._” Whatever comes short of perfect
purity in soul or perfect health in body is non-conformity to God
and contradicts his law, it being understood that only that
perfection is demanded which answers to the creature’s stage of
growth and progress, so that of the child there is required only
the perfection of the child, of the youth only the perfection of
the youth, of the man only the perfection of the man. See Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, chapter 1.

(_e_) Not outwardly published,—since all positive enactment is only the
imperfect expression of this underlying and unwritten law of being.

Much misunderstanding of God’s law results from confounding it
with published enactment. Paul takes the larger view that the law
is independent of such expression; see _Rom. 2:14, 15_—“_for when
Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law,
these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that
they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their
conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with
another accusing or else excusing them:_” see Expositor’s Greek
Testament, _in loco_: “ ‘_written on their hearts_,’ when
contrasted with the law written on the tables of stone, is equal
to ‘unwritten’; the Apostle refers to what the Greeks called
ἄγραφος νόμος.”

(_f_) Not inwardly conscious, or limited in its scope by men’s
consciousness of it. Like the laws of our physical being, the moral law
exists whether we recognize it or not.

Overeating brings its penalty in dyspepsia, whether we are
conscious of our fault or not. We cannot by ignorance or by vote
repeal the laws of our physical system. Self-will does not secure
independence, any more than the stars can by combination abolish
gravitation. Man cannot get rid of God’s dominion by denying its
existence, nor by refusing submission to it. _Psalm 2:1-4_—“_Why
do the nations rage ... against Jehovah ... saying, Let us break
their bonds asunder.... He that sitteth in the heavens will
laugh._” Salter, First Steps in Philosophy, 94—“The fact that one
is not aware of obligation no more affects its reality than
ignorance of what is at the centre of the earth affects the nature
of what is really discoverable there. We discover obligation, and
do not create it by thinking of it, any more than we create the
sensible world by thinking of it.”

(_g_) Not local, or confined to place,—since no moral creature can escape
from God, from his own being, or from the natural necessity that
unlikeness to God should involve misery and ruin.

“The Dutch auction” was the public offer of property at a price
beyond its value, followed by the lowering of the price until some
one accepted it as a purchaser. There is no such local exception
to the full validity of God’s demands. The moral law has even more
necessary and universal sway than the law of gravitation in the
physical universe. It is inwrought into the very constitution of
man, and of every other moral being. The man who offended the
Roman Emperor found the whole empire a prison.

(_h_) Not changeable, or capable of modification. Since law represents the
unchangeable nature of God, it is not a sliding scale of requirements
which adapts itself to the ability of the subjects. God himself cannot
change it without ceasing to be God.

The law, then, has a deeper foundation than that God merely “said
so.” God’s word and God’s will are revelations of his inmost
being; every transgression of the law is a stab at the heart of
God. Simon, Reconciliation, 141, 142—“God continues to demand
loyalty even after man has proved disloyal. Sin changes man, and
man’s change involves a change in God. Man now regards God as a
ruler and exactor, and God must regard man as a defaulter and a
rebel.” God’s requirement is not lessened because man is unable to
meet it. This inability is itself non-conformity to law, and is no
excuse for sin; see Dr. Bushnell’s sermon on “Duty not measured by
Ability.” The man with the withered hand would not have been
justified in refusing to stretch it forth at Jesus’ command (_Mat.
12:10-13_).

The obligation to obey this law and to be conformed to God’s
perfect moral character is based upon man’s original ability and
the gifts which God bestowed upon him at the beginning. Created in
the image of God, it is man’s duty to render back to God that
which God first gave, enlarged and improved by growth and culture
(_Luke 19:23_—“_wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank,
and I at my coming should have required it with interest_”). This
obligation is not impaired by sin and the weakening of man’s
powers. To let down the standard would be to misrepresent God.
Adolphe Monod would not save himself from shame and remorse by
lowering the claims of the law: “Save first the holy law of my
God,” he says, “after that you shall save me!”

Even salvation is not through violation of law. The moral law is
immutable, because it is a transcript of the nature of the
immutable God. Shall nature conform to me, or I to nature? If I
attempt to resist even physical laws, I am crushed. I can use
nature only by obeying her laws. Lord Bacon: “Natura enim non nisi
parendo vincitur.” So in the moral realm. We cannot buy off nor
escape the moral law of God. God will not, and God can not, change
his law by one hair’s breadth, even to save a universe of sinners.
Omar Kháyyám, in his Rubáiyát, begs his god to “reconcile the law
to my desires.” Marie Corelli says well: “As if a gnat should seek
to build a cathedral, and should ask to have the laws of
architecture altered to suit its gnat-like capacity.” See
Martineau, Types, 2:120.

Secondly, the law of God as the ideal of human nature.—A law thus
identical with the eternal and necessary relations of the creature to the
Creator, and demanding of the creature nothing less than perfect holiness,
as the condition of harmony with the infinite holiness of God, is adapted
to man’s finite nature, as needing law; to man’s free nature, as needing
moral law; and to man’s progressive nature, as needing ideal law.

Man, as finite, needs law, just as railway cars need a track to
guide them—to leap the track is to find, not freedom, but ruin.
Railway President: “Our rules are written in blood.” Goethe, Was
Wir Bringen, 19 Auftritt: “In vain shall spirits that are all
unbound To the pure heights of perfectness aspire; In limitation
first the Master shines, And law alone can give us liberty.”—Man,
as a free being, needs moral law. He is not an automaton, a
creature of necessity, governed only by physical influences. With
conscience to command the right, and will to choose or reject it,
his true dignity and calling are that he should freely realize the
right.—Man, as a progressive being, needs nothing less than an
ideal and infinite standard of attainment, a goal which he can
never overpass, an end which shall ever attract and urge him
forward. This he finds in the holiness of God.

The law is a _fence_, not only for ownership, but for care. God
not only demands, but he protects. Law is the transcript of love
as well as of holiness. We may reverse the well-known couplet and
say: “I slept, and dreamed that life was Duty; I woke and found
that life was Beauty.” “Cui servire regnare est.” Butcher, Aspects
of Greek Genius, 56—“In Plato’s Crito, the Laws are made to
present themselves in person to Socrates in prison, not only as
the guardians of his liberty, but as his lifelong friends, his
well-wishers, his equals, with whom he had of his own free will
entered into binding compact.” It does not harm the scholar to
have before him the ideal of perfect scholarship; nor the teacher
to have before him the ideal of a perfect school; nor the
legislator to have before him the ideal of perfect law. Gordon,
The Christ of To-day, 134—“The moral goal must be a flying goal;
the standard to which we are to grow must be ever rising; the type
to which we are to be conformed must have in it inexhaustible
fulness.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:119—“It is just the
best, purest, noblest human souls, who are least satisfied with
themselves and their own spiritual attainments; and the reason is
that the human is not a nature essentially different from the
divine, but a nature which, just because it is in essential
affinity with God, can be satisfied with nothing less than a
divine perfection.” J. M. Whiton, The Divine Satisfaction: “Law
requires being, character, likeness to God. It is automatic,
self-operating. Penalty is untransferable. It cannot admit of any
other satisfaction than the reëstablishment of the normal relation
which it requires. Punishment proclaims that the law has not been
satisfied. There is no cancelling of the curse except through the
growing up of the normal relation. Blessing and curse ensue upon
what we are, not upon what we were. Reparation is within the
spirit itself. The atonement is educational, not governmental.” We
reply that the atonement is both governmental and educational, and
that reparation must first be made to the holiness of God before
conscience, the mirror of God’s holiness, can reflect that
reparation and be at peace.

The law of God is therefore characterized by:

(_a_) All-comprehensiveness.—It is over us at all times; it respects our
past, our present, our future. It forbids every conceivable sin; it
requires every conceivable virtue; omissions as well as commissions are
condemned by it.

_Ps. 119:96_—“_I have seen an end of all perfection ... thy
commandment is exceeding broad_”; _Rom. 3:23_—“_all have sinned,
and fall short of the glory of God_”; _James 4:17_—“_To him
therefore that knoweth to do good, and __ doeth it not, to him it
is sin._” Gravitation holds the mote as well as the world. God’s
law detects and denounces the least sin, so that without atonement
it cannot be pardoned. The law of gravitation may be suspended or
abrogated, for it has no necessary ground in God’s being; but
God’s moral law cannot be suspended or abrogated, for that would
contradict God’s holiness. “About right” is not “all right.” “The
giant hexagonal pillars of basalt in the Scottish Staffa are
identical in form with the microscopic crystals of the same
mineral.” So God is our pattern, and goodness is our likeness to
him.

(_b_) Spirituality.—It demands not only right acts and words, but also
right dispositions and states. Perfect obedience requires not only the
intense and unremitting reign of love toward God and man, but conformity
of the whole inward and outward nature of man to the holiness of God.

_Mat. 5:22, 28_—the angry word is murder; the sinful look is
adultery. _Mark 12:30, 31_—“_thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength.... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself_”; _2 Cor. 10:5_—“_bringing every thought into captivity
to the obedience of Christ_”; _Eph. 5:1_—“_Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children_”; _1 Pet. 1:16_—“_Ye shall
be holy; for I am holy._” As the brightest electric light, seen
through a smoked glass against the sun, appears like a black spot,
so the brightest unregenerate character is dark, when compared
with the holiness of God. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 235,
remarks on _Gal. 6:4_—“_let each man prove his own work, and then
shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not of
his neighbor_”—“I have a small candle and I compare it with my
brother’s taper and come away rejoicing. Why not compare it with
the sun? Then I shall lose my pride and uncharitableness.” The
distance to the sun from the top of an ant-hill and from the top
of Mount Everest is nearly the same. The African princess praised
for her beauty had no way to verify the compliments paid her but
by looking in the glassy surface of the pool. But the trader came
and sold her a mirror. Then she was so shocked at her own ugliness
that she broke the mirror in pieces. So we look into the mirror of
God’s law, compare ourselves with the Christ who is reflected
there, and hate the mirror which reveals us to ourselves (_James
1:23, 24_).

(_c_) Solidarity.—It exhibits in all its parts the nature of the one
Lawgiver, and it expresses, in its least command, the one requirement of
harmony with him.

_Mat. 5:48_—“_Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect_”; _Mark 12:29, 30_—“_The Lord our God, the Lord
is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God_”; _James 2:10_—“_For
whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point,
he is become guilty of all_”; _4:12_—“_One only is the lawgiver
and judge._” Even little rattlesnakes are snakes. One link broken
in the chain, and the bucket falls into the well. The least sin
separates us from God. The least sin renders us guilty of the
whole law, because it shows us to lack the love which is required
in all the commandments. Those who send us to the Sermon on the
Mount for salvation send us to a tribunal that damns us. The
Sermon on the Mount is but a republication of the law given on
Sinai, but now in more spiritual and penetrating form. Thunders
and lightnings proceed from the N. T., as from the O. T., mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is only the introductory lecture of Jesus’
theological course, as _John 14-17_ is the closing lecture. In it
is announced the law, which prepares the way for the gospel. Those
who would degrade doctrine by exalting precept will find that they
have left men without the motive or the power to keep the precept.
Æschylus, Agamemnon: “For there’s no bulwark in man’s wealth to
him Who, through a surfeit, kicks—into the dim And
disappearing—Right’s great altar.”

Only to the first man, then, was the law proposed as a method of
salvation. With the first sin, all hope of obtaining the divine favor by
perfect obedience is lost. To sinners the law remains as a means of
discovering and developing sin in its true nature, and of compelling a
recourse to the mercy provided in Jesus Christ.

_2 Chron. 34:19_—“_And it came to pass, when the king had heard
the words of the law, that he rent his clothes_”; _Job 42:5,
6_—“_I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine
eye seeth thee; Wherefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and
ashes._” The revelation of God in _Is. 6:3, 5_—“_Holy, holy, holy,
is Jehovah of hosts_”—causes the prophet to cry like the leper:
“_Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips._” _Rom. 3:20_—“_by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the __
knowledge of sin_”; _5:20_—“_the law came in besides, that the
trespass might abound_”; _7:7, 8_—“_I had not known sin, except
through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had
said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in
me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from
the law sin is dead_”; _Gal. 3:24_—“_So that the law is become our
tutor,_” or attendant-slave, “_to bring us unto Christ, that we
might be justified by faith_”—the law trains our wayward boyhood
and leads it to Christ the Master, as in old times the slave
accompanied children to school. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 177,
178—“The law increases sin by increasing the knowledge of sin and
by increasing the activity of sin. The law does not add to the
inherent energy of the sinful principle which pervades human
nature, but it does cause this principle to reveal itself more
energetically in sinful act.” The law inspires fear, but it leads
to love. The Rabbins said that, if Israel repented but for one
day, the Messiah would appear.

No man ever yet drew a straight line or a perfect curve; yet he
would be a poor architect who contented himself with anything
less. Since men never come up to their ideals, he who aims to live
only an _average_ moral life will inevitably fall _below_ the
average. The law, then, leads to Christ. He who is the _ideal_ is
also the _way_ to attain the ideal. He who is himself the Word and
the Law embodied, is also the Spirit of life that makes obedience
possible to us (_John 14:6_—“_I am the way, and the truth, and the
life_”; _Rom. 8:2_—“_For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death_”). Mrs.
Browning, Aurora Leigh: “The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,
Unless he had given the Life too with the Law.” Christ _for_ us
upon the Cross, and Christ _in_ us by his Spirit, is the only
deliverance from the curse of the law; _Gal 3:13_—“_Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for
us._” We must see the claims of the law satisfied and the law
itself written on our hearts. We are “_reconciled to God through
the death of his Son_,” but we are also _“__saved by his life__”__
(Rom. 5:10_).

Robert Browning, in The Ring and the Book, represents Caponsacchi
as comparing himself at his best with the new ideal of “perfect as
Father in heaven is perfect” suggested by Pompilia’s purity, and
as breaking out into the cry: “O great, just, good God! Miserable
me!” In the Interpreter’s House of Pilgrim’s Progress, Law only
stirred up the dust in the foul room,—the Gospel had to sprinkle
water on the floor before it could be cleansed. E. G. Robinson:
“It is necessary to smoke a man out, before you can bring a higher
motive to bear upon him.” Barnabas said that Christ was the answer
to the riddle of the law. _Rom. 10:4_—“_Christ is the end of the
law unto righteousness to every one that believeth._” The railroad
track opposite Detroit on the St. Clair River runs to the edge of
the dock and seems intended to plunge the train into the abyss.
But when the ferry boat comes up, rails are seen upon its deck,
and the boat is the end of the track, to carry passengers over to
Detroit. So the law, which by itself would bring only destruction,
finds its end in Christ who ensures our passage to the celestial
city.

Law, then, with its picture of spotless innocence, simply reminds
man of the heights from which he has fallen. “It is a mirror which
reveals derangement, but does not create or remove it.” With its
demand of absolute perfection, up to the measure of man’s original
endowments and possibilities, it drives us, in despair of
ourselves, to Christ as our only righteousness and our only Savior
(_Rom. 8:3, 4_—“_For what the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the
ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit_”; _Phil. 3:8, 9_—“_that I may
gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of
mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith_”).
Thus law must prepare the way for grace, and John the Baptist must
precede Christ.

When Sarah Bernhardt was solicited to add an eleventh commandment,
she declined upon the ground there were already ten too many. It
was an expression of pagan contempt of law. In heathendom, sin and
insensibility to sin increased together. In Judaism and
Christianity, on the contrary, there has been a growing sense of
sin’s guilt and condemnableness. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Sept.
23, 1893:600—“Among the Jews there was a far profounder sense of
sin than in any other ancient nation. The law written on men’s
hearts evoked a lower consciousness of sin, and there are prayers
on the Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which may almost stand
beside the 51st Psalm. But, on the whole, the deep sense of sin
was the product of the revealed law.” See Fairbairn, Revelation of
Law and Scripture; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 187-242; Hovey, God
with Us, 187-210; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:45-50; Murphy,
Scientific Bases of Faith, 53-71; Martineau, Types, 2:120-125.

2. _Positive Enactment_, or the expression of the will of God in published
ordinances. This is also two-fold:

A. General moral precepts.—These are written summaries of the elemental
law (Mat. 5:48; 22:37-40), or authorized applications of it to special
human conditions (Ex. 20:1-17; Mat. chap. 5-8).

_Mat. 5:48_—“_Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect_”; _22:37-40_—“_Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God.... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two
commandments the whole law hangeth and the prophets_”; _Ex.
20:1-17_—the Ten Commandments; _Mat., chap. 5-8_—the Sermon on the
Mount. _Cf._ Augustine, on _Ps. 57:1_.

Solly, On the Will, 162, gives two illustrations of the fact that
positive precepts are merely applications of elemental law or the
law of nature: “ ‘_Thou shalt not steal_,’ is a moral law which
may be stated thus: _thou shalt not take that for thy own
property, which is the property of another_. The contradictory of
this proposition would be: _thou mayest take that for thy own
property which is the property of another_. But this is a
contradiction in terms; for it is the very conception of property,
that the owner stands in a peculiar relation to its subject
matter; and what is every man’s property is no man’s property, as
it is _proper_ to no man. Hence the contradictory of the
commandment contains a simple contradiction directly it is made a
rule universal; and the commandment itself is established as one
of the principles for the harmony of individual wills.

“ ‘_Thou shalt not tell a lie_,’ as a rule of morality, may be
expressed generally: _thou shall not by thy outward act make
another to believe thy thought to be other than it is_. The
contradictory made universal is: _every man may by his outward act
make another to believe his thought to be other than it is_. Now
this maxim also contains a contradiction, and is self-destructive.
It conveys a permission to do that which is rendered impossible by
the permission itself. Absolute and universal indifference to
truth, or the entire mutual independence of the thought and
symbol, makes the symbol cease to be a symbol, and the conveyance
of thought by its means, an impossibility.”

Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 48, 90—“Fundamental law of reason: So
act, that thy maxims of will might become laws in a system of
universal moral legislation.” This is Kant’s categorical
imperative. He expresses it in yet another form: “Act from maxims
fit to be regarded as universal laws of nature.” For expositions
of the Decalogue which bring out its spiritual meaning, see Kurtz,
Religionslehre, 9-72; Dick, Theology, 2:513-554; Dwight, Theology,
3:163-560; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:259-465.

B. Ceremonial or special injunctions.—These are illustrations of the
elemental law, or approximate revelations of it, suited to lower degrees
of capacity and to earlier stages of spiritual training (Ez. 20:25; Mat.
19:8; Mark 10:5). Though temporary, only God can say when they cease to be
binding upon us in their outward form.

All positive enactments, therefore, whether they be moral or ceremonial,
are republications of elemental law. Their forms may change, but the
substance is eternal. Certain modes of expression, like the Mosaic system,
may be abolished, but the essential demands are unchanging (Mat. 5:17, 18;
cf. Eph. 2:15). From the imperfection of human language, no positive
enactments are able to express in themselves the whole content and meaning
of the elemental law. “It is not the purpose of revelation to disclose the
whole of our duties.” Scripture is not a complete code of rules for
practical action, but an enunciation of principles, with occasional
precepts by way of illustration. Hence we must supplement the positive
enactment by the law of being—the moral ideal found in the nature of God.

_Ez. 20:25_—“_Moreover also I gave them statutes that were not
good, and ordinances wherein they should not live_”; _Mat.
19:8_—“_Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away
your wives_”; _Mark 10:5_—“_For your hardness of heart he wrote
you this commandment_”; _Mat. 5:17, 18_—“_Think not that I came to
destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to
fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass
away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the
law, till all things be accomplished_”; _cf._ _Eph. 2:15_—“_having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments
contained in ordinances_”; _Heb. 8:7_—“_if that first covenant had
been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a
second._” Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 90—“After the
coming of the new covenant, the keeping up of the old was as
needless a burden as winter garments in the mild air of summer, or
as the attempt of an adult to wear the clothes of a child.”

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5-35—“Jesus repudiates for himself and
for his disciples absolute subjection to O. T. Sabbath law (_Mark
2:27_ _sq._); to O. T. law as to external defilements (_Mark
7:15_); to O. T. divorce law (_Mark 10:2_ _sq._). He would
‘_fulfil_’ law and prophets by complete practical performance of
the revealed will of God. He would bring out their inner meaning,
not by literal and slavish obedience to every minute requirement
of the Mosaic law, but by revealing in himself the perfect life
and work toward which they tended. He would perfect the O. T.
conceptions of God—not keep them intact in their literal form, but
in their essential spirit. Not by quantitative extension, but by
qualitative renewal, he would fulfil the law and the prophets. He
would bring the imperfect expression in the O. T. to perfection,
not by servile letter-worship or allegorizing, but through grasp
of the divine idea.”

Scripture is not a series of minute injunctions and prohibitions
such as the Pharisees and the Jesuits laid down. The Koran showed
its immeasurable inferiority to the Bible by establishing the
letter instead of the spirit, by giving permanent, definite, and
specific rules of conduct, instead of leaving room for the growth
of the free spirit and for the education of conscience. This is
not true either of O. T. or of N. T. law. In Miss Fowler’s novel
The Farringdons, Mrs. Herbert wishes “that the Bible had been
written on the principle of that dreadful little book called
‘Don’t,’ which gives a list of the solecisms you should avoid; she
would have understood it so much better than the present system.”
Our Savior’s words about giving to him that asketh, and turning
the cheek to the smiter (_Mat 5:39-42_) must be interpreted by the
principle of love that lies at the foundation of the law. Giving
to every tramp and yielding to every marauder is not pleasing our
neighbor “_for that which is good unto edifying_” (_Rom. 15:2_).
Only by confounding the divine law with Scripture prohibition
could one write as in N. Amer. Rev., Feb. 1890:275—“Sin is the
transgression of a divine law; but there is no divine law against
suicide; therefore suicide is not sin.”

The written law was imperfect because God could, at the time, give
no higher to an unenlightened people. “But to say that the _scope_
and _design_ were imperfectly moral, is contradicted by the whole
course of the history. We must ask what is the moral standard in
which this course of education issues.” And this we find in the
life and precepts of Christ. Even the law of repentance and faith
does not take the place of the old law of being, but applies the
latter to the special conditions of sin. Under the Levitical law,
the prohibition of the touching of the dry bone (_Num. 19:16_),
equally with the purifications and sacrifices, the separations and
penalties of the Mosaic code, expressed God’s holiness and his
repelling from him all that savored of sin or death. The laws with
regard to leprosy were symbolic, as well as sanitary. So church
polity and the ordinances are not arbitrary requirements, but they
publish to dull sense-environed consciences, better than abstract
propositions could have done, the fundamental truths of the
Christian scheme. Hence they are not to be abrogated “_till he
come_” (_1 Cor. 11:26_).

The Puritans, however, in reënacting the Mosaic code, made the
mistake of confounding the eternal law of God with a partial,
temporary, and obsolete expression of it. So we are not to rest in
external precepts respecting woman’s hair and dress and speech,
but to find the underlying principle of modesty and subordination
which alone is of universal and eternal validity. Robert Browning,
The Ring and the Book, 1:255—“God breathes, not speaks, his
verdicts, felt not heard—Passed on successively to each court, I
call Man’s conscience, custom, manners, all that make More and
more effort to promulgate, mark God’s verdict in determinable
words, Till last come human jurists—solidify Fluid results,—what’s
fixable lies forged, Statute,—the residue escapes in fume, Yet
hangs aloft a cloud, as palpable To the finer sense as word the
legist welds. Justinian’s Pandects only make precise What simply
sparkled in men’s eyes before, Twitched in their brow or quivered
on their lip, Waited the speech they called, but would not come.”
See Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, 104; Tulloch, Doctrine of
Sin, 141-144; Finney, Syst. Theol., 1-40, 135-319; Mansel,
Metaphysics, 378, 379; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 191-195.

Paul’s injunction to women to keep silence in the churches (_1
Cor. 14:35_; _1 Tim. 2:11,12_) is to be interpreted by the larger
law of gospel equality and privilege (_Col. 3:11_). Modesty and
subordination once required a seclusion of the female sex which is
no longer obligatory. Christianity has emancipated woman and has
restored her to the dignity which belonged to her at the
beginning. “In the old dispensation Miriam and Deborah and Huldah
were recognized as leaders of God’s people, and Anna was a notable
prophetess in the temple courts at the time of the coming of
Christ. Elizabeth and Mary spoke songs of praise for all
generations. A prophecy of _Joel 2:28_ was that the daughters of
the Lord’s people should prophesy, under the guidance of the
Spirit, in the new dispensation. Philip the evangelist had ‘_four
virgin daughters, who prophesied_’ (_Acts 21:9_), and Paul
cautioned Christian women to have their heads covered when they
prayed or prophesied in public (_1 Cor. 11:5_), but had no words
against the work of such women. He brought Priscilla with him to
Ephesus, where she aided in training Apollos into better preaching
power (_Acts 18:26_). He welcomed and was grateful for the work of
those women who labored with him in the gospel at Philippi (_Phil.
4:3_). And it is certainly an inference from the spirit and
teachings of Paul that we should rejoice in the efficient service
and sound words of Christian women to-day in the Sunday School and
in the missionary field.” The command “_And he that heareth let
him say, Come_” (_Rev. 22:17_) is addressed to women also. See
Ellen Batelle Dietrick, Women in the Early Christian Ministry;
_per contra_, see G. F. Wilkin, Prophesying of Women, 183-193.

III. Relation of the Law to the Grace of God.

In human government, while law is an expression of the will of the
governing power, and so of the nature lying behind the will, it is by no
means an exhaustive expression of that will and nature, since it consists
only of general ordinances, and leaves room for particular acts of command
through the executive, as well as for “the institution of equity, the
faculty of discretionary punishment, and the prerogative of pardon.”

Amos, Science of Law, 29-46, shows how “the institution of equity,
the faculty of discretionary punishment, and the prerogative of
pardon” all involve expressions of will above and beyond what is
contained in mere statute. Century Dictionary, on Equity: “English
law had once to do only with property in goods, houses and lands.
A man who had none of these might have an interest in a salary, a
patent, a contract, a copyright, a security, but a creditor could
not at common law levy upon these. When the creditor applied to
the crown for redress, a chancellor or keeper of the king’s
conscience was appointed, who determined what and how the debtor
should pay. Often the debtor was required to put his intangible
property into the hands of a receiver and could regain possession
of it only when the claim against it was satisfied. These
chancellors’ courts were called courts of equity, and redressed
wrongs which the common law did not provide for. In later times
law and equity are administered for the most part by the same
courts. The same court sits at one time as a court of law, and at
another time as a court of equity.” “Summa lex, summa injuria,” is
sometimes true.

Applying now to the divine law this illustration drawn from human law, we
remark:

(_a_) The law of God is a _general_ expression of God’s will, applicable
to all moral beings. It therefore does not include the possibility of
special injunctions to individuals, and special acts of wisdom and power
in creation and providence. The very specialty of these latter expressions
of will prevents us from classing them under the category of law.

Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: “The soul of man was not produced
by heaven or earth, but was breathed immediately from God; so the
ways and dealings of God with spirits are not included in nature,
that is, in the laws of heaven and earth, but are reserved to the
law of his secret will and grace.”

(_b_) The law of God, accordingly, is a _partial_, not an exhaustive,
expression of God’s nature. It constitutes, indeed, a manifestation of
that attribute of holiness which is fundamental in God, and which man must
possess in order to be in harmony with God. But it does not fully express
God’s nature in its aspects of personality, sovereignty, helpfulness,
mercy.

The chief error of all pantheistic theology is the assumption that
law is an exhaustive expression of God: Strauss, Glaubenslehre,
1:31—“If nature, as the self-realization of the divine essence, is
equal to this divine essence, then it is infinite, and there can
be nothing above and beyond it.” This is a denial of the
transcendence of God (see notes on Pantheism, pages 100-105). Mere
law is illustrated by the Buddhist proverb: “As the cartwheel
follows the tread of the ox, so punishment follows sin.” Denovan:
“Apart from Christ, even if we have never yet broken the law, it
is only by steady and perfect obedience for the entire future that
we can remain justified. If we have sinned, we can be justified
[without Christ] only by suffering and exhausting the whole
penalty of the law.”

(_c_) Mere law, therefore, leaves God’s nature in these aspects of
personality, sovereignty, helpfulness, mercy, to be expressed toward
sinners in another way, namely, through the atoning, regenerating,
pardoning, sanctifying work of the gospel of Christ. As creation does not
exclude miracles, so law does not exclude grace (Rom. 8:3—“what the law
could not do ... God” did).

Murphy, Scientific Bases, 303-327, esp. 315—“To impersonal law, it
is indifferent whether its subjects obey or not. But God desires,
not the punishment, but the destruction, of sin.” Campbell,
Atonement, Introd., 28—“There are two regions of the divine
self-manifestation, one the reign of law, the other the kingdom of
God.” C. H. M.: “Law is the transcript of the mind of God as to
what man ought to be. But God is not merely law, but love. There
is more in his heart than could be wrapped up in the ‘ten words.’
Not the law, but only Christ, is the perfect image of God” (_John
1:17_—“_For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ_”). So there is more in man’s heart toward
God than exact fulfilment of requirement. The mother who
sacrifices herself for her sick child does it, not because she
must, but because she loves. To say that we are saved by grace, is
to say that we are saved both without merit on our own part, and
without necessity on the part of God. Grace is made known in
proclamation, offer, command; but in all these it is gospel, or
glad-tidings.

(_d_) Grace is to be regarded, however, not as abrogating law, but as
republishing and enforcing it (Rom. 3:31—“we establish the law”). By
removing obstacles to pardon in the mind of God, and by enabling man to
obey, grace secures the perfect fulfilment of law (Rom. 8:4—“that the
ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us”). Even grace has its law
(Rom. 8:2—“the law of the Spirit of life”); another higher law of grace,
the operation of individualizing mercy, overbears the “law of sin and of
death,”—this last, as in the case of the miracle, not being suspended,
annulled, or violated, but being merged in, while it is transcended by,
the exertion of personal divine will.

Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:155, 185, 194—“Man, having utterly
disabled his nature unto those [natural] means, hath had other
revealed by God, and hath received from heaven a law to teach him
how that which is desired naturally, must now be supernaturally
attained. Finally, we see that, because those latter exclude not
the former as unnecessary, therefore the law of grace teaches and
includes natural duties also, such as are hard to ascertain by the
law of nature.” The truth is midway between the Pelagian view,
that there is no obstacle to the forgiveness of sins, and the
modern rationalistic view, that since law fully expresses God,
there can be no forgiveness of sins at all. Greg, Creed of
Christendom, 2:217-228—“God is the only being who cannot forgive
sins.... Punishment is not the execution of a sentence, but the
occurrence of an effect.” Robertson, Lect. on Genesis, 100—“Deeds
are irrevocable,—their consequences are knit up with them
irrevocably.” So Baden Powell, Law and Gospel, in Noyes’
Theological Essays, 27. All this is true if God be regarded as
merely the source of law. But there is such a thing as grace, and
grace is more than law. There is no forgiveness in nature, but
grace is above and beyond nature.

Bradford, Heredity, 233, quotes from Huxley the terrible
utterance: “Nature always checkmates, without haste and without
remorse, never overlooking a mistake, or making the slightest
allowance for ignorance.” Bradford then remarks: “This is
Calvinism with God left out. Christianity does not deny or
minimize the law of retribution, but it discloses a Person who is
able to deliver in spite of it. There is grace, but grace brings
salvation to those who accept the terms of salvation—terms
strictly in accord with the laws revealed by science.” God
revealed himself, we add, not only in law but in life; see _Deut.
1:6, 7_—“_Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain_”—the
mountain of the law; “_turn you and take your journey_”—_i. e._,
see how God’s law is to be applied to life.

(_e_) Thus the revelation of grace, while it takes up and includes in
itself the revelation of law, adds something different in kind, namely,
the manifestation of the personal love of the Lawgiver. Without grace, law
has only a demanding aspect. Only in connection with grace does it become
“the perfect law, the law of liberty” (James 1:25). In fine, grace is that
larger and completer manifestation of the divine nature, of which law
constitutes the necessary but preparatory stage.

Law reveals God’s love and mercy, but only in their mandatory
aspect; it requires in men conformity to the love and mercy of
God; and as love and mercy in God are conditioned by holiness, so
law requires that love and mercy should be conditioned by holiness
in men. Law is therefore chiefly a revelation of holiness: it is
in grace that we find the chief revelation of love; though even
love does not save by ignoring holiness, but rather by vicariously
satisfying its demands. Robert Browning, Saul: “I spoke as I saw.
I report as man may of God’s work—All’s Love, yet all’s Law.”

Dorner, Person of Christ, 1:64, 78—“The law was a word (λόγος),
but it was not a λόγος τέλειος, a plastic word, like the words of
God that brought forth the world, for it was only imperative, and
there was no reality nor willing corresponding to the command
(_dem Sollen fehlte das Seyn, das Wollen_). The Christian λόγος is
λόγος ἀληθειας—νόμος τέλειος τῆς ἐλευθερίας—an operative and
effective word, as that of creation.” Chaucer, The Persones Tale:
“For sothly the lawe of God is the love of God.” S. S. Times,
Sept. 14, 1901:595—“Until a man ceases to be an outsider to the
kingdom and knows the liberty of the sons of God, he is apt to
think of God as the great Exacter, the great Forbidder, who reaps
where he has not sown and gathers where he has not strewn.”
Burton, in Bap. Rev., July, 1879:261-273, art.: Law and Divine
Intervention; Farrar, Science and Theology, 184; Salmon, Reign of
Law; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:31.

Section II.—Nature Of Sin.

I. Definition of Sin.

Sin is lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act,
disposition, or state.

In explanation, we remark that (_a_) This definition regards sin as
predicable only of rational and voluntary agents. (_b_) It assumes,
however, that man has a rational nature below consciousness, and a
voluntary nature apart from actual volition. (_c_) It holds that the
divine law requires moral likeness to God in the affections and tendencies
of the nature, as well as in its outward activities. (_d_) It therefore
considers lack of conformity to the divine holiness in disposition or
state as a violation of law, equally with the outward act of
transgression.

In our discussion of the Will (pages 504-513), we noticed that
there are permanent states of the will, as well as of the
intellect and of the sensibilities. It is evident, moreover, that
these permanent states, unlike man’s deliberate acts, are always
very imperfectly conscious, and in many cases are not conscious at
all. Yet it is in these very states that man is most unlike God,
and so, as law only reflects God (see pages 537-544), most lacking
in conformity to God’s law.

One main difference between Old School and New School views of sin
is that the latter constantly tends to limit sin to mere act,
while the former finds sin in the states of the soul. We propose
what we think to be a valid and proper compromise between the two.
We make sin coëxtensive, not with act, but with activity. The Old
School and the New School are not so far apart, when we remember
that the New School “choice” is _elective preference_, exercised
so soon as the child is born (Park) and reasserting itself in all
the subordinate choices of life; while the Old School “state” is
not a dead, passive, mechanical thing, but is a _state of active
movement_, or of tendency to move, toward evil. As God’s holiness
is not passive purity but purity willing (pages 268-275), so the
opposite to this, sin, is not passive impurity but is impurity
willing.

The soul may not always be conscious, but it may always be active.
At his creation man “_became a living soul_” (_Gen. 2:7_), and it
may be doubted whether the human spirit ever ceases its activity,
any more than the divine Spirit in whose image it is made. There
is some reason to believe that even in the deepest sleep the body
rests rather than the mind. And when we consider how large a
portion of our activity is automatic and continuous, we see the
impossibility of limiting the term “sin” to the sphere of
momentary act, whether conscious or unconscious.

E. G. Robinson: “Sin is not mere act—something foreign to the
being. It is a quality of being. There is no such thing as a sin
apart from a sinner, or an act apart from an actor. God punishes
sinners, not sins. Sin is a mode of being; as an entity by itself
it never existed. God punishes sin as a state, not as an act. Man
is not responsible for the consequences of his crimes, nor for the
acts themselves, except as they are symptomatic of his personal
states.” Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 5:162—“The knowledge
of sin has justly been termed the β and ψ of philosophy.”

Our treatment of Holiness, as belonging to the nature of God (pages
268-275); of Will, as not only the faculty of volitions, but also a
permanent state of the soul (pages 504-513); and of Law as requiring the
conformity of man’s nature to God’s holiness (pages 537-544); has prepared
us for the definition of sin as a state. The chief psychological defect of
New School theology, next to its making holiness to be a mere form of
love, is its ignoring of the unconscious and subconscious elements in
human character. To help our understanding of sin as an underlying and
permanent state of the soul, we subjoin references to recent writers of
note upon psychology and its relations to theology.

We may preface our quotations by remarking that mind is always
greater than its conscious operations. The man is more than his
acts. Only the smallest part of the self is manifested in the
thoughts, feelings, and volitions. In counting, to put myself to
sleep, I find, when my attention has been diverted by other
thoughts, that the counting has gone on all the same. Ladd,
Philosophy of Mind, 176, speaks of the “dramatic sundering of the
ego.” There are dream-conversations. Dr. Johnson was once greatly
vexed at being worsted by his opponent in an argument in a dream.
M. Maury in a dream corrected the bad English of his real self by
the good English of his other unreal self. Spurgeon preached a
sermon in his sleep after vainly trying to excogitate one when
awake, and his wife gave him the substance of it after he woke.
Hegel said that “Life is divided into two realms—a night-life of
genius, and a day-life of consciousness.”

Du Prel, Philosophy of Mysticism, propounds the thesis: “The ego
is not wholly embraced in self-consciousness,” and claims that
there is much of psychical activity within us of which our common
waking conception of ourselves takes no account. Thus when “dream
dramatizes”—when we engage in a dream-conversation in which our
interlocutor’s answer comes to us with a shock of surprise—if our
own mind is assumed to have furnished that answer, it has done so
by a process of unconscious activity. Dwinell, in Bib. Sac., July,
1890:369-389—“The soul is only imperfectly in possession of its
organs, and is able to report only a small part of its activities
in consciousness.” Thoughts come to us like foundlings laid at our
door. We slip in a question to the librarian, Memory, and after
leaving it there awhile the answer appears on the bulletin board.
Delbœuf, Le Sommeil et les Rêves, 91—“The dreamer is a momentary
and involuntary dupe of his own imagination, as the poet is the
momentary and voluntary dupe, and the insane man is the permanent
and involuntary dupe.” If we are the organs not only of our own
past thinking, but, as Herbert Spencer suggests, also the organs
of the past thinking of the race, his doctrine may give
additional, though unintended, confirmation to a Scriptural view
of sin.

William James, Will to Believe, 316, quotes from F. W. H. Myers,
in Jour. Psych. Research, who likens our ordinary consciousness to
the visible part of the solar spectrum; the total consciousness is
like that spectrum prolonged by the inclusion of the ultra-red and
the ultra-violet rays—1 to 12 and 96. “Each of us,” he says, “is
an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows—an
individuality which can never express itself completely through
any corporeal manifestation. The self manifests itself through the
organism; but there is always some part of the self unmanifested,
and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in
abeyance or reserve.” William James himself, in Scribner’s
Monthly, March, 1890:361-373, sketches the hypnotic investigations
of Janet and Binet. There is a secondary, subconscious self.
Hysteria is the lack of synthetising power, and consequent
disintegration of the field of consciousness into mutually
exclusive parts. According to Janet, the secondary and the primary
consciousnesses, added together, can never exceed the normally
total consciousness of the individual. But Prof. James says:
“There are trances which obey another type. I know a
non-hysterical woman, who in her trances knows facts which
altogether transcend her possible normal consciousness, facts
about the lives of people whom she never saw or heard of before.”

Our affections are deeper and stronger than we know. We learn how
deep and strong they are, when their current is resisted by
affliction or dammed up by death. We know how powerful evil
passions are, only when we try to subdue them. Our dreams show us
our naked selves. On the morality of dreams, the London Spectator
remarks: “Our conscience and power of self-control act as a sort
of watchdog over our worse selves during the day, but when the
watchdog is off duty, the primitive or natural man is at liberty
to act as he pleases; our ‘soul’ has left us at the mercy of our
own evil nature, and in our dreams we become what, except for the
grace of God, we would always be.”

Both in conscience and in will there is a self-diremption. Kant’s
categorical imperative is only one self laying down the law to the
other self. The whole Kantian system of ethics is based on this
doctrine of double consciousness. Ladd, in his Philosophy of Mind,
169 _sq._, speaks of “psychical automatism.” Yet this automatism
is possible only to self-conscious and cognitively remembering
minds. It is always the “I” that puts itself into “that other.” We
could not conceive of the other self except under the figure of
the “I.” All our mental operations are ours, and we are
responsible for them, because the subconscious and even the
unconscious self is the product of past self-conscious thoughts
and volitions. The present settled state of our wills is the
result of former decisions. The will is a storage battery, charged
by past acts, full of latent power, ready to manifest its energy
so soon as the force which confines it is withdrawn. On
unconscious mental action, see Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 139,
515-543, and criticism of Carpenter, in Ireland, Blot on the
Brain, 226-238; Bramwell, Hypnotism, its History, Practice and
Theory, 358-398; Porter, Human Intellect, 333, 334; _versus_ Sir
Wm. Hamilton, who adopts the maxim: “Non sentimus, nisi sentiamus
nos sentire” (Philosophy, ed. Wight, 171). Observe also that sin
may infect the body, as well as the soul, and may bring it into a
state of non-conformity to God’s law (see H. B. Smith, Syst.
Theol., 267).

In adducing our Scriptural and rational proof of the definition of sin as
a state, we desire to obviate the objection that this view leaves the soul
wholly given over to the power of evil. While we maintain that this is
true of man apart from God, we also insist that side by side with the evil
bent of the human will there is always an immanent divine power which
greatly counteracts the force of evil, and if not resisted leads the
individual soul—even when resisted leads the race at large—toward truth
and salvation. This immanent divine power is none other than Christ, the
eternal Word, the Light which lighteth every man; see John 1:4, 9.

_John 1:4, 9_—“_In him was life, and the life was the light of
men.... There was the true light, even the light which lighteth
every man._” See a further statement in A. H. Strong, Cleveland
Sermon, May, 1904, with regard to the old and the new view as to
sin:—“Our fathers believed in total depravity, and we agree with
them that man naturally is devoid of love to God and that every
faculty is weakened, disordered, and corrupted by the selfish bent
of his will. They held to original sin. The selfish bent of man’s
will can be traced back to the apostacy of our first parents; and,
on account of that departure of the race from God, all men are by
nature children of wrath. And all this is true, if it is regarded
as a statement of the facts, apart from their relation to Christ.
But our fathers did not see, as we do, that man’s relation to
Christ antedated the Fall and constituted an underlying and
modifying condition of man’s life. Humanity was naturally in
Christ, in whom all things were created and in whom they all
consist. Even man’s sin did not prevent Christ from still working
in him to counteract the evil and to suggest the good. There was
an internal, as well as an external, preparation for man’s
redemption. In this sense, of a divine principle in man striving
against the selfish and godless will, there was a total
redemption, over against man’s total depravity; and an original
grace, that was even more powerful than original sin.

“We have become conscious that total depravity alone is not a
sufficient or proper expression of the truth; and the phrase has
been outgrown. It has been felt that the old view of sin did not
take account of the generous and noble aspirations, the unselfish
efforts, the strivings after God, of even unregenerate men. For
this reason there has been less preaching about sin, and less
conviction as to its guilt and condemnation. The good impulses of
men outside the Christian pale have been often credited to human
nature, when they should have been credited to the indwelling
Spirit of Christ. I make no doubt that one of our radical
weaknesses at this present time is our more superficial view of
sin. Without some sense of sin’s guilt and condemnation, we cannot
feel our need of redemption. John the Baptist must go before
Christ; the law must prepare the way for the gospel.

“My belief is that the new apprehension of Christ’s relation to
the race will enable us to declare, as never before, the lost
condition of the sinner; while at the same time we show him that
Christ is with him and in him to save. This presence in every man
of a power not his own that works for righteousness is a very
different doctrine from that ’divinity of man’ which is so often
preached. The divinity is not the divinity of man, but the
divinity of Christ. And the power that works for righteousness is
not the power of man, but the power of Christ. It is a power whose
warning, inviting, persuading influence renders only more marked
and dreadful the evil will which hampers and resists it. Depravity
is all the worse, when we recognize in it the constant antagonist
of an ever-present, all-holy, and all-loving Redeemer.”

1. Proof.

As it is readily admitted that the outward act of transgression is
properly denominated sin, we here attempt to show only that lack of
conformity to the law of God in disposition or state is also and equally
to be so denominated.

A. From Scripture.

(_a_) The words ordinarily translated “sin,” or used as synonyms for it,
are as applicable to dispositions and states as to acts (חטאה and ἁμαρτία
= a missing, failure, coming short [_sc._ of God’s will]).

See _Num. 15:28_—“_sinneth unwittingly_”; _Ps. 51:2_—“_cleanse me
from my sin_”; _5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And
in sin did my mother conceive me_”; _Rom. 7:17_—“_sin which
dwelleth in me_”; compare _Judges 20:16_, where the literal
meaning of the word appears: “_sling stones at a hair-breadth, and
not miss_” (חטא). In a similar manner, משע [LXX ἀσέβεια] =
separation from, rebellion against [sc. God]; see _Lev. 16:16,
21_; _cf._ Delitzsch on _Ps. 32:1_. עון [LXX ἀδικία] = bending,
perversion [sc. of what is right], iniquity; see _Lev. 5:17_;
_cf._ _John 7:18_. See also the Hebrew רע, רשע, [= ruin,
confusion], and the Greek ἀποστασία, ἐπιθυμία, ἔχθρα, κακία,
πονηρία, σάρξ. None of these designations of sin limits it to mere
act,—most of them more naturally suggest disposition or state.
Ἁμαρτία implies that man in sin does not reach what he seeks
therein; sin is a state of delusion and deception (Julius Müller).
On the words mentioned, see Girdlestone, O. T. Synonyms; Cremer,
Lexicon N. T. Greek; Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 28, pp. 43-47;
Trench, N. T. Synonyms, part 2:61, 73.

(b) The New Testament descriptions of sin bring more distinctly to view
the states and dispositions than the outward acts of the soul (1 John
3:4—ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία, where ἀνομία =, not “transgression of the
law,” but, as both context and etymology show, “lack of conformity to law”
or “lawlessness”—Rev. Vers.).

See _1 John 5:17_—“_All unrighteousness is sin_”; _Rom.
14:23_—“_whatsoever is not of faith is sin_”; _James 4:17_—“_To
him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it
is sin._” Where the sin is that of _not doing_, sin cannot be said
to consist in _act_. It must then at least be a _state_.

(_c_) Moral evil is ascribed not only to the thoughts and affections, but
to the heart from which they spring (we read of the “evil thoughts” and of
the “evil heart”—Mat. 15:19 and Heb. 3:12).

See also _Mat. 5:22_—anger in the heart is murder; _28_—impure
desire is adultery. _Luke 6:45_—“_the evil man out of the evil
treasure_ [of his heart] _bringeth forth that which is evil._”
_Heb. 3:12_—“_an evil heart of unbelief_”; _cf._ _Is. 1:5_—“_the
whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint_”; _Jer. 17:9_—“_The
heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly
corrupt: who can know it?_”—here the sin that cannot be known is
not sin of act, but sin of the heart. “Below the surface stream,
shallow and light, Of what we _say_ we feel; below the stream, As
light, of what we _think_ we feel, there flows, With silent
current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we
feel _indeed_.”

(_d_) The state or condition of the soul which gives rise to wrong desires
and acts is expressly called sin (Rom. 7:8—“Sin ... wrought in me ... all
manner of coveting”).

_John 8:34_—“_Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of
sin_”; _Rom. 7:11, 13, 14, 17, 20_—“_sin ... beguiled me ...
working death to me ... I am carnal, sold under sin ... sin which
dwelleth in me._” These representations of sin as a principle or
state of the soul are incompatible with the definition of it as a
mere act. John Byrom, 1691-1763: “Think and be careful what thou
art within, For there is sin in the desire of sin. Think and be
thankful in a different case, For there is grace in the desire of
grace.”

Alexander, Theories of the Will, 85—“In the person of Paul is
represented the man who has been already justified by faith and
who is at peace with God. In the 6th chapter of Romans, the
question is discussed whether such a man is obliged to keep the
moral law. But in the 7th chapter the question is not, _must_ man
keep the moral law? but why is he so _incapable_ of keeping the
moral law? The struggle is thus, not in the soul of the
unregenerate man who is dead in sin, but in the soul of the
regenerate man who has been pardoned and is endeavoring to keep
the law.... In a state of sin the will is determined toward the
bad; in a state of grace the will is determined toward
righteousness; but not wholly so, for the flesh is not at once
subdued, and there is a war between the good and bad principles of
action in the soul of him who has been pardoned.”

(_e_) Sin is represented as existing in the soul, prior to the
consciousness of it, and as only discovered and awakened by the law (Rom.
7:9, 10—“when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died”—if sin
“revived,” it must have had previous existence and life, even though it
did not manifest itself in acts of conscious transgression).

_Rom. 7:8_—“_apart from the law sin is dead_”—here is sin which is
not yet sin of act. Dead or unconscious sin is still sin. The fire
in a cave discovers reptiles and stirs them, but they were there
before; the light and heat do not create them. Let a beam of
light, says Jean Paul Richter, through your window-shutter into a
darkened room, and you reveal a thousand motes floating in the air
whose existence was before unsuspected. So the law of God reveals
our “_hidden faults_” (_Ps. 19:12_)—infirmities, imperfections,
evil tendencies and desires—which also cannot all be classed as
_acts_ of transgression.

(_f_) The allusions to sin as a permanent power or reigning principle, not
only in the individual but in humanity at large, forbid us to define it as
a momentary act, and compel us to regard it as being primarily a settled
depravity of nature, of which individual sins or acts of transgression are
the workings and fruits (Rom. 5:21—“sin reigned in death”; 6:12—“let not
therefore sin reign in your mortal body”).

In _Rom. 5:21_, the reign of sin is compared to the reign of
grace. As grace is not an act but a principle, so sin is not an
act but a principle. As the poisonous exhalations from a well
indicate that there is corruption and death at the bottom, so the
ever-recurring thoughts and acts of sin are evidence that there is
a principle of sin in the heart,—in other words, that sin exists
as a permanent disposition or state. A momentary act cannot
“reign” nor “dwell”; a disposition or state can. Maudsley, Sleep,
its Psychology, makes the damaging confession: “If we were held
responsible for our dreams, there is no living man who would not
deserve to be hanged.”

(_g_) The Mosaic sacrifices for sins of ignorance and of omission, and
especially for general sinfulness, are evidence that sin is not to be
limited to mere act, but that it includes something deeper and more
permanent in the heart and the life (Lev. 1:3; 5:11; 12:8; _cf._ Luke
2:24).

The sin-offering for sins of ignorance (_Lev. 4:14, 20, 31_), the
trespass-offering for sins of omission (_Lev. 5:5, 6_), and the
burnt offering to expiate general sinfulness (_Lev. 1:3_; _cf._
_Luke 2:22-24_), all witness that sin is not confined to mere act.
_John 1:29_—“_the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin,_” not the
sins, “_of the world_”. See Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:233; Schmid,
Bib. Theol. N. T., 194, 381, 442, 448, 492, 604; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 3:210-217; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin,
2:259-306; Edwards, Works. 3:16-18. For the New School definition
of sin, see Fitch, Nature of Sin, and Park, in Bib. Sac., 7:551.

B. From the common judgment of mankind.

(_a_) Men universally attribute vice as well as virtue not only to
conscious and deliberate acts, but also to dispositions and states. Belief
in something more permanently evil than acts of transgression is indicated
in the common phrases, “hateful temper,” “wicked pride,” “bad character.”

As the beatitudes (_Mat. 5:1-12_) are pronounced, not upon acts,
but upon dispositions of the soul, so the curses of the law are
uttered not so much against single acts of transgression as
against the evil affections from which they spring. Compare the
“_works of the flesh_” (_Gal. 5:19_) with the “_fruit of the
Spirit_” (_5:22_). In both, dispositions and states predominate.

(_b_) Outward acts, indeed, are condemned only when they are regarded as
originating in, and as symptomatic of, evil dispositions. Civil law
proceeds upon this principle in holding crime to consist, not alone in the
external act, but also in the evil motive or intent with which it is
performed.

The _mens rea_ is essential to the idea of crime. The
“_idle-word_” (_Mat 12:36_) shall be brought into the judgment,
not because it is so important in itself, but because it is a
floating straw that indicates the direction of the whole current
of the heart and life. Murder differs from homicide, not in any
outward respect, but simply because of the motive that prompts
it,—and that motive is always, in the last analysis, an evil
disposition or state.

(_c_) The stronger an evil disposition, or in other words, the more it
connects itself with, or resolves itself into, a settled state or
condition of the soul, the more blameworthy is it felt to be. This is
shown by the distinction drawn between crimes of passion and crimes of
deliberation.

Edwards: “Guilt consists in having one’s heart wrong, and in doing
wrong from the heart.” There is guilt in evil desires, even when
the will combats them. But there is greater guilt when the will
consents. The outward act may be in each case the same, but the
guilt of it is proportioned to the extent to which the evil
disposition is settled and strong.

(_d_) This condemning sentence remains the same, even although the origin
of the evil disposition or state cannot be traced back to any conscious
act of the individual. Neither the general sense of mankind, nor the civil
law in which this general sense is expressed, goes behind the fact of an
existing evil will. Whether this evil will is the result of personal
transgression or is a hereditary bias derived from generations passed,
this evil will is the man himself, and upon him terminates the blame. We
do not excuse arrogance or sensuality upon the ground that they are family
traits.

The young murderer in Boston was not excused upon the ground of a
congenitally cruel disposition. We repent in later years of sins
of boyhood, which we only now see to be sins; and converted
cannibals repent, after becoming Christians, of the sins of
heathendom which they once committed without a thought of their
wickedness. The peacock cannot escape from his feet by flying, nor
can we absolve ourselves from blame for an evil state of will by
tracing its origin to a remote ancestry. We are responsible for
what we are. How this can be, when we have not personally and
consciously originated it, is the problem of original sin, which
we have yet to discuss.

(_e_) When any evil disposition has such strength in itself, or is so
combined with others, as to indicate a settled moral corruption in which
no power to do good remains, this state is regarded with the deepest
disapprobation of all. Sin weakens man’s power of obedience, but the
can-not is a will-not, and is therefore condemnable. The opposite
principle would lead to the conclusion that, the more a man weakened his
powers by transgression, the less guilty he would be, until absolute
depravity became absolute innocence.

The boy who hates his father cannot change his hatred into love by
a single act of will; but he is not therefore innocent.
Spontaneous and uncontrollable profanity is the worst profanity of
all. It is a sign that the whole will, like a subterranean
Kentucky river, is moving away from God, and that no recuperative
power is left in the soul which can reach into the depths to
reverse its course. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:110-114; Shedd,
Hist. Doct., 2:79-92, 152-157; Richards, Lectures on Theology,
256-301; Edwards, Works, 2:134; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 243-262;
Princeton Essays, 2:224-239; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 394.

C. From the experience of the Christian.

Christian experience is a testing of Scripture truth, and therefore is not
an independent source of knowledge. It may, however, corroborate
conclusions drawn from the word of God. Since the judgment of the
Christian is formed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we may trust
this more implicitly than the general sense of the world. We affirm, then,
that just in proportion to his spiritual enlightenment and self-knowledge,
the Christian

(_a_) Regards his outward deviations from God’s law, and his evil
inclinations and desires, as outgrowths and revelations of a depravity of
nature which lies below his consciousness; and

(_b_) Repents more deeply for this depravity of nature, which constitutes
his inmost character and is inseparable from himself, than for what he
merely feels or does.

In proof of these statements we appeal to the biographies and writings of
those in all ages who have been by general consent regarded as most
advanced in spiritual culture and discernment.

“Intelligentia prima est, ut te noris peccatorem.” Compare David’s
experience, _Ps. 51:6_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts: And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know
wisdom_”—with Paul’s experience in _Rom. 7:24_—“_Wretched man that
I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?_”—with
Isaiah’s experience (_6:5_), when in the presence of God’s glory
he uses the words of the leper (_Lev. 13:45_) and calls himself
“_unclean_,” and with Peter’s experience (_Luke 5:8_) when at the
manifestation of Christ’s miraculous power he “_fell down at
Jesus’ __ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O
Lord._” So the publican cries: _“__God, be thou merciful to me the
sinner__”__ (Luke 18:13)_, and Paul calls himself the “_chief_” of
sinners (_1 Tim. 1:15_). It is evident that in none of these cases
were there merely single acts of transgression in view; the
humiliation and self-abhorrence were in view of permanent states
of depravity. Van Oosterzee: “What we do outwardly is only the
revelation of our inner nature.” The outcropping and visible rock
is but small in extent compared with the rock that is underlying
and invisible. The iceberg has eight-ninths of its mass below the
surface of the sea, yet icebergs have been seen near Cape Horn
from 700 to 800 feet high above the water.

It may be doubted whether any repentance is genuine which is not
repentance for _sin_ rather than for _sins_; compare _John
16:8_—the Holy Spirit “_will convict the world in respect of
sin_/” On the difference between conviction of sins and conviction
of sin, see Hare, Mission of the Comforter. Dr. A. J. Gordon, just
before his death, desired to be left alone. He was then overheard
confessing his sins in such seemingly extravagant terms as to
excite fear that he was in delirium. Martensen, Dogmatics,
389—Luther during his early experience “often wrote to Staupitz:
‘Oh, my sins, my sins!’ and yet in the confessional he could name
no sins in particular which he had to confess; so that it was
clearly a sense of the general depravity of his nature which
filled his soul with deep sorrow and pain.” Luther’s conscience
would not accept the comfort that he _wished_ to be without sin,
and therefore had no real sin. When he thought himself too great a
sinner to be saved, Staupitz replied: “Would you have the
semblance of a sinner and the semblance of a Savior?”

After twenty years of religious experience, Jonathan Edwards wrote
(Works 1:22, 23; also 3:16-18): “Often since I have lived in this
town I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and
vileness, very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind
of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together, so
that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a
vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my
heart than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared
to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear
the very worst of all mankind, of all that have been since the
beginning of the world to this time; and that I should have by far
the lowest place in hell. When others that have come to talk with
me about their soul’s concerns have expressed the sense they have
had of their own wickedness, by saying that it seemed to them they
were as bad as the devil himself; I thought their expressions
seemed exceeding faint and feeble to represent my wickedness.”

Edwards continues: “My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long
appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought
and imagination—like an infinite deluge, or mountains over my
head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me
to be, than by heaping infinite on infinite and multiplying
infinite by infinite. Very often for these many years, these
expressions are in my mind and in my mouth: ‘Infinite upon
infinite—infinite upon infinite!’ When I look into my heart and
take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely
deeper than hell. And it appears to me that were it not for free
grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the
fulness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power
and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power and in
all the glory of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk down in my
sins below hell itself, far beyond the sight of everything but the
eye of sovereign grace that can pierce even down to such a depth.
And yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceeding
small and faint; it is enough to amaze me that I have no more
sense of my sin. I know certainly that I have very little sense of
my sinfulness. When I have had turns of weeping for my sins, I
thought I knew at the time that my repentance was nothing to my
sin.... It is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young
Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness,
pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart.”

Jonathan Edwards was not an ungodly man, but the holiest man of
his time. He was not an enthusiast, but a man of acute,
philosophic mind. He was not a man who indulged in exaggerated or
random statements, for with his power of introspection and
analysis he combined a faculty and habit of exact expression
unsurpassed among the sons of men. If the maxim “cuique in arte
sua credendum est” is of any value, Edwards’s statements in a
matter of religious experience are to be taken as correct
interpretations of the facts. H. B. Smith (System. Theol., 275)
quotes Thomasius as saying: “It is a striking fact in Scripture
that statements of the depth and power of sin are chiefly from the
regenerate.” Another has said that “a serpent is never seen at its
whole length until it is dead.” Thomas à Kempis (ed. Gould and
Lincoln, 142)—“Do not think that thou hast made any progress
toward perfection, till thou feelest that thou art less than the
least of all human beings.” Young’s Night Thoughts: “Heaven’s
Sovereign saves all beings but himself That hideous sight—a naked
human heart.”

Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: “You may justly
condemn yourself for being the greatest sinner that you know, 1.
Because you know more of the folly of your own heart than of other
people’s, and can charge yourself with various sins which you know
only of yourself and cannot be sure that others are guilty of
them. 2. The greatness of our guilt arises from the greatness of
God’s goodness to us. You know more of these aggravations of your
sins than you do of the sins of other people. Hence the greatest
saints have in all ages condemned themselves as the greatest
sinners.” We may add: 3. That, since each man is a peculiar being,
each man is guilty of peculiar sins, and in certain particulars
and aspects may constitute an example of the enormity and
hatefulness of sin, such as neither earth nor hell can elsewhere
show.

Of Cromwell, as a representative of the Puritans, Green says
(Short History of the English People, 454): “The vivid sense of
the divine Purity close to such men, made the life of common men
seem sin.” Dr. Arnold of Rugby (Life and Corresp., App. D.): “In a
deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than anything else, abides
a saving knowledge of God.” Augustine, on his death-bed, had the
32d Psalm written over against him on the wall. For his
expressions with regard to sin, see his Confessions, book 10. See
also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 284, note.

2. Inferences.

In the light of the preceding discussion, we may properly estimate the
elements of truth and of error in the common definition of sin as “the
voluntary transgression of known law.”

(_a_) Not all sin is voluntary as being a distinct and conscious volition;
for evil disposition and state often precede and occasion evil volition,
and evil disposition and state are themselves sin. All sin, however, is
voluntary as springing either directly from will, or indirectly from those
perverse affections and desires which have themselves originated in will.
“Voluntary” is a term broader then “volitional,” and includes all those
permanent states of intellect and affection which the will has made what
they are. Will, moreover, is not to be regarded as simply the faculty of
volitions, but as primarily the underlying determination of the being to a
supreme end.

Will, as we have seen, includes preference (θέλημα, _voluntas_,
_Wille_) as well as volition (βουλή, _arbitrium_, _Willkür_). We
do not, with Edwards and Hodge, regard the sensibilities as states
of the will. They are, however, in their character and their
objects determined by the will, and so they may be called
voluntary. The permanent state of the will (New School “elective
preference”) is to be distinguished from the permanent state of
the sensibilities (dispositions, or desires). But both are
voluntary because both are due to past decisions of the will, and
“whatever springs from will we are responsible for” (Shedd,
Discourses and Essays, 243). Julius Müller, 2:51—“We speak of
self-consciousness and reason as something which the ego _has_,
but we identify the will _with_ the ego. No one would say, ‘my
will has decided this or that,’ although we do say, ‘my reason, my
conscience teaches me this or that.’ The will is the very man
himself, as Augustine says: ‘Voluntas est in omnibus; imo omnes
nihil aliud quam voluntates sunt.’ ”

For other statements of the relation of disposition to will, see
Alexander, Moral Science, 151—“In regard to dispositions, we say
that they are in a sense voluntary. They properly belong to the
will, taking the word in a large sense. In judging of the morality
of voluntary acts, the principle from which they proceed is always
included in our view and comes in for a large part of the blame”;
see also pages 201, 207, 208. Edwards on the Affections, 3:1-22;
on the Will, 3:4—“The affections are only certain modes of the
exercise of the will.” A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 234—“All
sin is voluntary, in the sense that all sin has its root in the
perverted dispositions, desires, and affections which constitute
the depraved state of the will.” But to Alexander, Edwards, and
Hodge, we reply that the first sin was not voluntary in this
sense, for there was no such depraved state of the will from which
it could spring. We are responsible for dispositions, not upon the
ground that they are a part of the will, but upon the ground that
they are effects of will, in other words, that past decisions of
the will have made them what they are. See pages 504-513.

(_b_) Deliberate intention to sin is an aggravation of transgression, but
it is not essential to constitute any given act or feeling a sin. Those
evil inclinations and impulses which rise unbidden and master the soul
before it is well aware of their nature, are themselves violations of the
divine law, and indications of an inward depravity which in the case of
each descendant of Adam is the chief and fontal transgression.

Joseph Cook: “Only the surface-water of the sea is penetrated with
light. Beneath is a half-lit region. Still further down is
absolute darkness. We are greater than we know.” Weismann,
Heredity, 2:8—“At the depth of 170 meters, or 552 feet, there is
about as much light as that of a starlight night when there is no
moon. Light penetrates as far as 400 meters, or 1,300 feet, but
animal life exists at a depth of 4,000 meters, or 13,000 feet.
Below 1,300 feet, all animals are blind.” (_Cf._ _Ps. 51:6;
19:12_—“_the inward parts ... the hidden parts ... hidden
faults_”—hidden not only from others, but even from ourselves.)
The light of consciousness plays only on the surface of the waters
of man’s soul.

(_c_) Knowledge of the sinfulness of an act or feeling is also an
aggravation of transgression, but it is not essential to constitute it a
sin. Moral blindness is the effect of transgression, and, as inseparable
from corrupt affections and desires, is itself condemned by the divine
law.

It is our duty to do better than we know. Our duty of knowing is
as real as our duty of doing. Sin is an opiate. Some of the most
deadly diseases do not reveal themselves in the patient’s
countenance, nor has the patient any adequate understanding of his
malady. There is an ignorance which is indolence. Men are often
unwilling to take the trouble of rectifying their standards of
judgment. There is also an ignorance which is intention. Instance
many students’ ignorance of College laws.

We cannot excuse disobedience by saying: “I forgot.” God’s
commandment is: “_Remember_”—as in _Ex. 20:8_; _cf._ _2 Pet.
3:5_—“_For this they wilfully forget._” “Ignorantia legis neminem
excusat.” _Rom. 2:12_—“_as many as have sinned without the law
shall also perish without the law_”; _Luke 12:48_—“_he that knew
not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten_ [though]
_with few stripes._” The aim of revelation and of preaching is to
bring man “_to himself_” (_cf._ _Luke 15:17_)—to show him what he
has been doing and what he is. Goethe: “We are never deceived: we
deceive ourselves.” Royce, World and Individual, 2:359—“The sole
possible free moral action is then a freedom that relates to the
present fixing of attention upon the ideas of the Ought which are
already present. To sin is _consciously to choose to forget_,
through a narrowing of the field of attention, an Ought that one
already recognizes.”

(_d_) Ability to fulfill the law is not essential to constitute the
non-fulfilment sin. Inability to fulfill the law is a result of
transgression, and, as consisting not in an original deficiency of faculty
but in a settled state of the affections and will, it is itself
condemnable. Since the law presents the holiness of God as the only
standard for the creature, ability to obey can never be the measure of
obligation or the test of sin.

Not power to the contrary, in the sense of ability to change all
our permanent states by mere volition, is the basis of obligation
and responsibility; for surely Satan’s responsibility does not
depend upon his power at any moment to turn to God and be holy.

Definitions of sin—Melanchthon: Defectus vel inclinatio vel actio
pugnans cum lege Dei. Calvin: Illegalitas, seu difformitas a lege.
Hollaz: Aberratio a lege divina. Hollaz adds: “Voluntariness does
not enter into the definition of sin, generically considered. Sin
may be called voluntary, either in respect to its cause, as it
inheres in the will, or in respect to the act, as it procedes from
deliberate volition. Here is the antithesis to the Roman Catholics
and to the Socinians, the latter of whom define sin as a voluntary
[_i. e._, a volitional] transgression of law”—a view, says Hase
(Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 162-164), “which is derived from
the necessary methods of civil tribunals, and which is
incompatible with the orthodox doctrine of original sin.” On the
New School definition of sin, see Fairchild, Nature of Sin, in
Bib. Sac., 25:30-48; Whedon, in Bib. Sac., 19:251, and On the
Will, 328. _Per contra_, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:180-190;
Lawrence, Old School in N. E. Theol., in Bib. Sac., 20:317-328;
Julius Müller, Doc. Sin, 1:40-72; Nitzsch, Christ. Doct., 216;
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 124-126.

II. The Essential Principle of Sin.

The definition of sin as lack of conformity to the divine law does not
exclude, but rather necessitates, an inquiry into the characterizing
motive or impelling power which explains its existence and constitutes its
guilt. Only three views require extended examination. Of these the first
two constitute the most common excuses for sin, although not propounded
for this purpose by their authors: Sin is due (1) to the human body, or
(2) to finite weakness. The third, which we regard as the Scriptural view,
considers sin as (3) the supreme choice of self, or selfishness.

In the preceding section on the Definition of Sin, we showed that sin is a
_state_, and a state of the _will_. We now ask: What is the nature of this
state? and we expect to show that it is essentially a _selfish_ state of
the will.

1. Sin as Sensuousness.

This view regards sin as the necessary product of man’s sensuous nature—a
result of the soul’s connection with a physical organism. This is the view
of Schleiermacher and of Rothe. More recent writers, with John Fiske,
regard moral evil as man’s inheritance from a brute ancestry.

For statement of the view here opposed, see Schleiermacher, Der
Christliche Glaube, 1:361-364—“Sin is a prevention of the
determining power of the spirit, caused by the independence
(Selbständigkeit) of the sensuous functions.” The child lives at
first a life of sense, in which the bodily appetites are supreme.
The senses are the avenues of all temptation, the physical
domineers over the spiritual, and the soul never shakes off the
body. Sin is, therefore, a malarious exhalation from the low
grounds of human nature, or, to use the words of Schleiermacher,
“a positive opposition of the flesh to the spirit.” Pfleiderer,
Prot. Theol. seit Kant, 113,—says that Schleiermacher here repeats
Spinoza’s “inability of the spirit to control the sensuous
affections.” Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:230—“In the
development of man out of naturality, the lower impulses have
already won a power of self-assertion and resistance, before the
reason could yet come to its valid position and authority. As this
propensity of the self-will is grounded in the specific nature of
man, it may be designated as inborn, hereditary, or _original_
sinfulness.”

Rothe’s view of sin may be found in his Dogmatik, 1:300-302;
notice the connection of Rothe’s view of sin with his doctrine of
continuous creation (see page 416 of this Compendium).
Encyclopædia Britannica, 21:2—“Rothe was a thorough going
evolutionist who regarded the natural man as the consummation of
the development of physical nature, and regarded spirit as the
personal attainment, with divine help, of those beings in whom the
further creative process of moral development is carried on. This
process of development necessarily takes an abnormal form and
passes through the phase of sin. This abnormal condition
necessitates a fresh creative act, that of salvation, which was
however from the very first a part of the divine plan of
development. Rothe, notwithstanding his evolutionary doctrine,
believed in the supernatural birth of Christ.”

John Fiske, Destiny of Man, 103—“Original sin is neither more nor
less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him,
and the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation.”
Thus man is a sphynx in whom the human has not yet escaped from
the animal. So Bowne, Atonement, 69, declares that sin is “a relic
of the animal not yet outgrown, a resultant of the mechanism of
appetite and impulse and reflex action for which the proper
inhibitions are not yet developed. Only slowly does it grow into a
consciousness of itself as evil.... It would be hysteria to regard
the common life of men as rooting in a conscious choice of
unrighteousness.”

In refutation of this view, it will be sufficient to urge the following
considerations:

(_a_) It involves an assumption of the inherent evil of matter, at least
so far as regards the substance of man’s body. But this is either a form
of dualism, and may be met with the objections already brought against
that system, or it implies that God, in being the author of man’s physical
organism, is also the responsible originator of human sin.

This has been called the “caged-eagle theory” of man’s existence;
it holds that the body is a prison only, or, as Plato expressed
it, “the tomb of the soul,” so that the soul can be pure only by
escaping from the body. But matter is not eternal. God made it,
and made it pure. The body was made to be the servant of the
spirit. We must not throw the blame of sin upon the senses, but
upon the spirit that used the senses so wickedly. To attribute sin
to the body is to make God, the author of the body, to be also the
author of sin,—which is the greatest of blasphemies. Men cannot
“justly accuse Their Maker, or their making, or their fate”
(Milton, Paradise Lost, 3:112). Sin is a contradiction within the
spirit itself, and not simply between the spirit and the flesh.
Sensuous activities are not themselves sinful—this is essential
Manichæanism. Robert Burns was wrong when he laid the blame for
his delinquencies upon “the passions wild and strong.” And Samuel
Johnson was wrong when he said that “Every man is a rascal so soon
as he is sick.” The normal soul has power to rise above both
passion and sickness and to make them serve its moral development.
On the development of the body, as the organ of sin, see
Straffen’s Hulsean Lectures on Sin, 33-50. The essential error of
this view is its identification of the moral with the physical. If
it were true, then Jesus, who came in human flesh, must needs be a
sinner.

(_b_) In explaining sin as an inheritance from the brute, this theory
ignores the fact that man, even though derived from a brute ancestry, is
no longer brute, but man, with power to recognize and to realize moral
ideals, and under no necessity to violate the law of his being.

See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-180, on The Fall and the
Redemption of Man, in the Light of Evolution: “Evolution has been
thought to be incompatible with any proper doctrine of a fall. It
has been assumed by many that man’s immoral course and conduct are
simply survivals of his brute inheritance, inevitable remnants of
his old animal propensities, yieldings of the weak will to fleshly
appetites and passions. This is to deny that sin is truly sin, but
it is also to deny that man is truly man.... Sin must be referred
to freedom, or it is not sin. To explain it as the natural result
of weak will overmastered by lower impulses is to make the animal
nature, and not the will, the cause of transgression. And that is
to say that man at the beginning is not man, but brute.” See also
D. W. Simon, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1897:1-20—“The key to the strange
and dark contrast between man and his animal ancestry is to be
found in the fact of the Fall. Other species live normally. No
remnant of the reptile hinders the bird. The bird is a true bird.
Only man fails to live normally and is a true man only after ages
of sin and misery.” Marlowe very properly makes his Faustus to be
tempted by sensual baits only after he has sold himself to Satan
for power.

To regard vanity, deceitfulness, malice, and revenge as inherited
from brute ancestors is to deny man’s original innocence and the
creatorship of God. B. W. Lockhart: “The animal mind knows not
God, is not subject to his law, neither indeed can be, just
because it is animal, and as such is incapable of right or
wrong.... If man were an animal and nothing more, he could not
sin. It is by virtue of being something more, that he becomes
capable of sin. Sin is the yielding of the known higher to the
known lower. It is the soul’s abdication of its being to the
brute.... Hence the need of spiritual forces from the spiritual
world of divine revelation, to heal and build and discipline the
soul within itself, giving it the victory over the animal passions
which constitute the body and over the kingdom of blind desire
which constitutes the world. The final purpose of man is growth of
the soul into liberty, truth, love, likeness to God. Education is
the word that covers the movement, and probation is incident to
education.” We add that reparation for past sin and renewing power
from above must follow probation, in order to make education
possible.

Some recent writers hold to a real fall of man, and yet regard
that fall as necessary to his moral development. Emma Marie
Caillard, in Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1893: 879—“Man passed out of a
state of innocence—unconscious of his own imperfection—into a
state of consciousness of it. The will became slave instead of
master. The result would have been the complete stoppage of his
evolution but for redemption, which restored his will and made the
continuance of his evolution possible. Incarnation was the method
of redemption. But even apart from the fall, this incarnation
would have been necessary to reveal to man the goal of his
evolution and so to secure his coöperation in it.” Lisle,
Evolution of Spiritual Man, 39, and in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:
431-452—“Evolution by catastrophe in the natural world has a
striking analogue in the spiritual world.... Sin is primarily not
so much a fall from a higher to a lower, as a failure to rise from
a lower to a higher; not so much eating of the forbidden tree, as
failure to partake of the tree of life. The latter represented
communion and correspondence with God, and had innocent man
continued to reach out for this, he would not have fallen. Man’s
refusal to choose the higher preceded and conditioned his fall to
the lower, and the essence of sin is therefore in this refusal,
whatever may cause the will to make it.... Man chose the lower of
his own free will. Then his centripetal force was gone. His
development was swiftly and endlessly away from God. He reverted
to his original type of savage animalism; and yet, as a
self-conscious and free-acting being, he retained a sense of
responsibility that filled him with fear and suffering.”

On the development-theory of sin, see W. W. McLane, in New
Englander, 1891: 180-188; A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, 60-62; Lyman
Abbott, Evolution of Christianity, 203-208; Le Conte, Evolution,
330, 365-375; Henry Drummond, Ascent of Man, 1-13, 329, 342; Salem
Wilder, Life, its Nature, 266-273; Wm. Graham, Creed of Science,
38-44; Frank H. Foster, Evolution and the Evangelical System;
Chandler, The Spirit of Man, 45-47.

(_c_) It rests upon an incomplete induction of facts, taking account of
sin solely in its aspect of self-degradation, but ignoring the worst
aspect of it as self-exaltation. Avarice, envy, pride, ambition, malice,
cruelty, revenge, self-righteousness, unbelief, enmity to God, are none of
them fleshly sins, and upon this principle are incapable of explanation.

Two historical examples may suffice to show the insufficiency of
the sensuous theory of sin. Goethe was not a markedly sensual man;
yet the spiritual vivisection which he practised on Friederike
Brion, his perfidious misrepresentation of his relations with
Kestner’s wife in the “Sorrows of Werther,” and his flattery of
Napoleon, when a patriot would have scorned the advances of the
invader of his country, show Goethe to have been a very
incarnation of heartlessness and selfishness. The patriot Boerne
said of him: “Not once has he ever advanced a poor solitary word
in his country’s cause—he who from the lofty height he has
attained might speak out what none other but himself would dare
pronounce.” It has been said that Goethe’s first commandment to
genius was: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and thy neighbor’s
wife.” His biographers count up sixteen women to whom he made love
and who reciprocated his affection, though it is doubtful whether
he contented himself with the doctrine of 16 to 1. As Sainte-Beuve
said of Châteaubriand’s attachments: “They are like the stars in
the sky,—the longer you look, the more of them you discover.”
Christiane Vulpius, after being for seventeen years his mistress,
became at last his wife. But the wife was so slighted that she was
driven to intemperance, and Goethe’s only son inherited her
passion and died of drink. Goethe was the great heathen of modern
Christendom, deriding self-denial, extolling self-confidence,
attention to the present, the seeking of enjoyment, and the
submission of one’s self to the decrees of fate. Hutton calls
Goethe “a Narcissus in love with himself.” Like George Eliot’s
“Dinah,” in Adam Bede, Goethe’s “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,”
in Wilhelm Meister, are the purely artistic delineation of a
character with which he had no inner sympathy. On Goethe, see
Hutton, Essays, 2:1-79; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:490; A. H.
Strong, Great Poets, 279-331; Principal Shairp, Culture and
Religion, 16—“Goethe, the high priest of culture, loathes Luther,
the preacher of righteousness”; S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern
Literature, 149-156.

Napoleon was not a markedly sensual man, but “his self-sufficiency
surpassed the self-sufficiency of common men as the great Sahara
desert surpasses an ordinary sand patch.” He wantonly divulged his
amours to Josephine, with all the details of his ill-conduct, and
when she revolted from them, he only replied: “I have the right to
meet all your complaints with an eternal I.” When his wars had
left almost no able-bodied men in France, he called for the boys,
saying: “A boy can stop a bullet as well as a man,” and so the
French nation lost two inches of stature. Before the battle of
Leipzig, when there was prospect of unexampled slaughter, he
exclaimed: “What are the lives of a million of men, to carry out
the will of a man like me?” His most truthful epitaph was: “The
little butchers of Ghent to Napoleon the Great” [butcher]. Heine
represents Napoleon as saying to the world: “Thou shalt have no
other gods before me.” Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, 1:225—“At a
fête given by the city of Paris to the Emperor, the repertory of
inscriptions being exhausted, a brilliant device was resorted to.
Over the throne which he was to occupy, were placed, in letters of
gold, the following words from the Holy Scriptures: ‘I am the I
am.’ And no one seemed to be scandalized.” Iago, in Shakespeare’s
Othello, is the greatest villain of all literature; but Coleridge,
Works, 4:180, calls attention to his passionless character. His
sin is, like that of Goethe and of Napoleon, sin not of the flesh
but of the intellect and will.

(_d_) It leads to absurd conclusions,—as, for example, that asceticism, by
weakening the power of sense, must weaken the power of sin; that man
becomes less sinful as his senses fail with age; that disembodied spirits
are necessarily holy; that death is the only Redeemer.

Asceticism only turns the current of sin in other directions.
Spiritual pride and tyranny take the place of fleshly desires. The
miser clutches his gold more closely as he nears death. Satan has
no physical organism, yet he is the prince of evil. Not our own
death, but Christ’s death, saves us. But when Rousseau’s Émile
comes to die, he calmly declares: “I am delivered from the
trammels of the body, and am myself without contradiction.” At the
age of seventy-five Goethe wrote to Eckermann: “I have ever been
esteemed one of fortune’s favorites, nor can I complain of the
course my life has taken. Yet truly there has been nothing but
care and toil, and I may say that I have never had four weeks of
genuine pleasure.” Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:743—“When the
authoritative demand of Jesus Christ, to confess sin and beg
remission through atoning blood, is made to David Hume, or David
Strauss, or John Stuart Mill, none of whom were sensualists, it
wakens intense mental hostility.”

(_e_) It interprets Scripture erroneously. In passages like Rom. 7:18—οὐκ
οἰκεῖ ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, ἀγαθόν—σάρξ, or flesh,
signifies, not man’s body, but man’s whole being when destitute of the
Spirit of God. The Scriptures distinctly recognize the seat of sin as
being in the soul itself, not in its physical organism. God does not tempt
man, nor has he made man’s nature to tempt him (James 1:13, 14).

In the use of the term “_flesh_,” Scripture puts a stigma upon
sin, and intimates that human nature without God is as corruptible
and perishable as the body would be without the soul to inhabit
it. The “carnal mind,” or _“__mind of the flesh__”__ (Rom. 8:7)_,
accordingly means, not the sensual mind, but the mind which is not
under the control of the Holy Spirit, its true life. See Meyer, on
_1 Cor. 1:26_—σάρξ—“the purely human element in man, as opposed to
the divine principle”; Pope, Theology, 2:65—σάρξ—“the whole being
of man, body, soul, and spirit, separated from God and subjected
to the creature”; Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 19—σάρξ—“human
nature as living in and for itself, sundered from God and opposed
to him.” The earliest and best statement of this view of the term
σάρξ is that of Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:295-333,
especially 321. See also Dickson, St. Paul’s Use of the Terms
Flesh and Spirit, 270-271—σάρξ—“human nature without the
πνεῦμα.... man standing by himself, or left to himself, over
against God.... the natural man, conceived as not having yet
received grace, or as not yet wholly under its influence.”

_James 1:14, 15_—“_desire, when it hath conceived, beareth
sin_”—innocent desire—for it comes in before the sin—innocent
constitutional propensity, not yet of the nature of depravity, is
only the _occasion_ of sin. The love of freedom is a part of our
nature; sin arises only when the will determines to indulge this
impulse without regard to the restraints of the divine law.
Luther, Preface to Ep. to Romans: “Thou must not understand
‘flesh’ as though that only were ‘flesh’ which is connected with
unchastity. St. Paul uses ‘flesh’ of the whole man, body and soul,
reason and all his faculties included, because all that is in him
longs and strives after the ‘flesh’.” Melanchthon: “Note that
‘flesh’ signifies the entire nature of man, sense and reason,
without the Holy Spirit.” Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 76—“The σάρξ
of Paul corresponds to the κόσμος of John. Paul sees the divine
economy; John the divine nature. That Paul did not hold sin to
consist in the possession of a body appears from his doctrine of a
bodily resurrection (_1 Cor. 15:38-49_). This resurrection of the
body is an integral part of immortality.” On σάρξ, see Thayer, N.
T. Lexicon, 571; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 319.

(_f_) Instead of explaining sin, this theory virtually denies its
existence,—for if sin arises from the original constitution of our being,
reason may recognize it as misfortune, but conscience cannot attribute to
it guilt.

Sin which in its ultimate origin is a necessary thing is no longer
sin. On the whole theory of the sensuous origin of sin, see
Neander, Planting and Training, 386, 428; Ernesti, Ursprung der
Sünde, 1:29-274; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:132-147; Tulloch,
Doctrine of Sin, 144—“That which is an inherent and necessary
power in the creation cannot be a contradiction of its highest
law.” This theory confounds sin with the mere consciousness of
sin. On Schleiermacher, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin,
1:341-349. On the sense-theory of sin in general, see John Caird,
Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:26-52; N. R. Wood, The Witness of
Sin, 79-87.

2. Sin as Finiteness.

This view explains sin as a necessary result of the limitations of man’s
finite being. As an incident of imperfect development, the fruit of
ignorance and impotence, sin is not absolutely but only relatively evil—an
element in human education and a means of progress. This is the view of
Leibnitz and of Spinoza. Modern writers, as Schurman and Royce, have
maintained that moral evil is the necessary background and condition of
moral good.

The theory of Leibnitz may be found in his Théodicée, part 1,
sections 20 and 31; that of Spinoza in his Ethics, part 4,
proposition 20. Upon this view sin is the blundering of
inexperience, the thoughtlessness that takes evil for good, the
ignorance that puts its fingers into the fire, the stumbling
without which one cannot learn to walk. It is a fruit which is
sour and bitter simply because it is immature. It is a means of
discipline and training for something better,—it is holiness in
the germ, good in the making—“Erhebung des Menschen zur freien
Vernunft.” The Fall was a fall up, and not down.

John Fiske, in addition to his sense-theory of sin already
mentioned, seems to hold this theory also. In his Mystery of Evil,
he says: “Its impress upon the human soul is the indispensable
background against which shall be set hereafter the eternal joys
of heaven”; in other words, sin is necessary to holiness, as
darkness is the indispensable contrast and background to light;
without black, we should never be able to know white. Schurman,
Belief in God, 251 _sq._—“The possibility of sin is the
correlative of the free initiative God has vacated on man’s
behalf.... The essence of sin is the enthronement of self.... Yet,
without such self-absorption, there could be no sense of union
with God. For consciousness is possible only through opposition.
To know A, we must know it through not-A. Alienation from God is
the necessary condition of communion with God. And this is the
meaning of the Scripture that ‘where sin abounded, grace shall
much more abound.’... Modern culture protests against the Puritan
enthronement of goodness above truth.... For the decalogue it
would substitute the wider new commandment of Goethe: ‘Live
resolutely in the Whole, in the Good, in the Beautiful.’ The
highest religion can be content with nothing short of the
synthesis demanded by Goethe.... God is the universal life in
which individual activities are included as movements of a single
organism.”

Royce, World and Individual, 2:364-384—“Evil is a discord
necessary to perfect harmony. In itself it is evil, but in
relation to the whole it has value by showing us its own
finiteness and imperfection. It is a sorrow to God as much as to
us; indeed, all our sorrow is his sorrow. The evil serves the good
only by being overcome, thwarted, overruled. Every evil deed must
somewhere and at some time be atoned for, by some other than the
agent, if not by the agent himself.... All finite life is a
struggle with evil. Yet from the final point of view the Whole is
good. The temporal order contains at no moment anything that can
satisfy. Yet the eternal order is perfect. We have all sinned and
come short of the glory of God. Yet in just our life, viewed in
its entirety, the glory of God is completely manifest. These hard
sayings are the deepest expressions of the essence of true
religion. They are also the most inevitable outcome of
philosophy.... Were there no longing in time, there would be no
peace in eternity. The prayer that God’s will may be done on earth
as it is in heaven is identical with what philosophy regards as
simple fact.”

We object to this theory that

(_a_) It rests upon a pantheistic basis, as the sense-theory rests upon
dualism. The moral is confounded with the physical; might is identified
with right. Since sin is a necessary incident of finiteness, and creatures
can never be infinite, it follows that sin must be everlasting, not only
in the universe, but in each individual soul.

Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson are representatives of this view in
literature. Goethe spoke of the “idleness of wishing to jump off
from one’s own shadow.” He was a disciple of Spinoza, who believed
in one substance with contradictory attributes of thought and
extension. Goethe took the pantheistic view of God with the
personal view of man. He ignored the fact of sin. Hutton calls him
“the wisest man the world has seen who was without humility and
faith, and who lacked the wisdom of a child.” Speaking of Goethe’s
Faust, Hutton says: “The great drama is radically false in its
fundamental philosophy. Its primary notion is that even a spirit
of pure evil is an exceedingly useful being, because he stirs into
activity those whom he leads into sin, and so prevents them from
rusting away in pure indolence. There are other and better means
of stimulating the positive affections of men than by tempting
them to sin.” On Goethe, see Hutton, Essays, 2:1-79; Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:490; A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology,
279-331.

Carlyle was a Scotch Presbyterian _minus_ Christianity. At the age
of twenty-five, he rejected miraculous and historical religion,
and thenceforth had no God but natural Law. His worship of
objective truth became a worship of subjective sincerity, and his
worship of personal will became a worship of impersonal force. He
preached truth, service, sacrifice, but all in a mandatory and
pessimistic way. He saw in England and Wales “twenty-nine
millions—mostly fools.” He had no love, no remedy, no hope. In our
civil war, he was upon the side of the slaveholder. He claimed
that his philosophy made right to be might, but in practice he
made might to be right. Confounding all moral distinctions, as he
did in his later writings, he was fit to wear the title which he
invented for another: “President of the
Heaven-and-Hell-Amalgamation Society.” Froude calls him “a
Calvinist without the theology”—a believer in predestination
without grace. On Carlyle, see S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern
Literature, 131-178.

Emerson also is the worshiper of successful force. His pantheism
is most manifest in his poems “Cupido” and “Brahma,” and in his
Essays on “Spirit” and on “The Over-soul.” Cupido: “The solid,
solid universe Is pervious to Love; With bandaged eyes he never
errs, Around, below, above. His blinding light He flingeth white
On God’s and Satan’s brood, And reconciles by mystic wiles The
evil and the good.” Brahma: “If the red slayer thinks he slays, Or
if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame or fame. They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my
abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of
the good, Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.”

Emerson taught that man’s imperfection is not sin, and that the
cure for it lies in education. “He lets God evaporate into
abstract Ideality. Not a Deity in the concrete, nor a superhuman
Person, but rather the immanent divinity in things, the
essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of
the transcendental cult.” His view of Jesus is found in his
Essays, 2:263—“Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom Paine, or the
coarsest blasphemer, helps humanity by resisting this exuberance
of power.” In his Divinity School Address, he banished the person
of Jesus from genuine religion. He thought “one could not be a man
if he must subordinate his nature to Christ’s nature.” He failed
to see that Jesus not only absorbs but transforms, and that we
grow only by the impact of nobler souls than our own. Emerson’s
essay style is devoid of clear and precise theological statement,
and in this vagueness lies its harmfulness. Fisher, Nature and
Method of Revelation, xii—“Emerson’s pantheism is not hardened
into a consistent creed, for to the end he clung to the belief in
personal immortality, and he pronounced the acceptance of this
belief ‘the test of mental sanity.’ ” On Emerson, see S. L.
Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 97-123.

We may call this theory the “green-apple theory” of sin. Sin is a
green apple, which needs only time and sunshine and growth to
bring it to ripeness and beauty and usefulness. But we answer that
sin is not a green apple, but an apple with a worm at its heart.
The evil of it can never be cured by growth. The fall can never be
anything else than downward. Upon this theory, sin is an
inseparable factor in the nature of finite things. The highest
archangel cannot be without it. Man in moral character is “the
asymptote of God,”—forever learning, but never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth. The throne of iniquity is set up forever
in the universe. If this theory were true, Jesus, in virtue of his
partaking of our finite humanity, must needs be a sinner. His
perfect development, without sin, shows that sin was not a
necessity of finite progress. Matthews, in Christianity and
Evolution, 137—“It was not necessary for the prodigal to go into
the far country and become a swineherd, in order to find out the
father’s love.” E. H. Johnson, Syst. Theol., 141—“It is not the
privilege of the Infinite alone to be good.” Dorner, System,
1:119, speaks of the moral career which this theory describes, as
“a _progressus in infinitum_, where the constant approach to the
goal has as its reverse side an eternal separation from the goal.”
In his “Transformation,” Hawthorne hints, though rather
hesitatingly, that without sin the higher humanity of man could
not be taken up at all, and that sin may be essential to the first
conscious awakening of moral freedom and to the possibility of
progress; see Hutton, Essays, 2:381.

(_b_) So far as this theory regards moral evil as a necessary
presupposition and condition of moral good, it commits the serious error
of confounding the possible with the actual. What is necessary to goodness
is not the actuality of evil, but only the possibility of evil.

Since we cannot know white except in contrast to black, it is
claimed that without knowing actual evil we could never know
actual good. George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 49, 50, has
well shown that in that case the elimination of evil would imply
the elimination of good. Sin would need to have place in God’s
being in order that he might be holy, and thus he would be
divinity and devil in one person. Jesus too must needs be evil as
well as good. Not only would it be true, as intimated above, that
Christ, since his humanity is finite, must be a sinner, but also
that we ourselves, who must always be finite, must always be
sinners. We grant that holiness, in either God or man, must
involve the abstract possibility of its opposite. But we maintain
that, as this possibility in God is only abstract and never
realized, so in man it should be only abstract and never realized.
Man has power to reject this possible evil. His sin is a turning
of the merely possible evil, by the decision of his will, into
actual evil. Robert Browning is not free from the error above
mentioned; see S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature,
207-210; A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 433-444.

This theory of sin dates back to Hegel. To him there is no real
sin and cannot be. Imperfection there is and must always be,
because the relative can never become the absolute. Redemption is
only an evolutionary process, indefinitely prolonged, and evil
must remain an eternal condition. All finite thought is an element
in the infinite thought, and all finite will an element in the
infinite will. As good cannot exist without evil as its
antithesis, infinite righteousness should have for its counterpart
an infinite wickedness. Hegel’s guiding principle was that “What
is rational is real, and what is real is rational.” Seth,
Hegelianism and Personality, remarks that this principle ignores
“the riddle of the painful earth.” The disciples of Hegel thought
that nothing remained for history to accomplish, now that the
World-spirit had come to know himself in Hegel’s philosophy.

Biedermann’s Dogmatik is based upon the Hegelian philosophy. At
page 649 we read: “Evil is the finiteness of the world-being which
clings to all individual existences by virtue of their belonging
to the immanent world-order. Evil is therefore a necessary element
in the divinely willed being of the world.” Bradley follows Hegel
in making sin to be no reality, but only a relative appearance.
There is no free will, and no antagonism between the will of God
and the will of man. Darkness is an evil, a destroying agent. But
it is not a positive force, as light is. It cannot be attacked and
overcome as an entity. Bring light, and darkness disappears. So
evil is not a positive force, as good is. Bring good, and evil
disappears. Herbert Spencer’s Evolutionary Ethics fits in with
such a system, for he says: “A perfect man in an imperfect race is
impossible.” On Hegel’s view of sin, a view which denies holiness
even to Christ, see J. Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:390-407; Dorner, Hist.
Doct. Person of Christ, B. 3:131-162; Stearns, Evidence of Christ.
Experience, 92-96; John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 2:1-25; Forrest,
Authority of Christ, 13-16.

(_c_) It is inconsistent with known facts,—as for example, the following:
Not all sins are negative sins of ignorance and infirmity; there are acts
of positive malignity, conscious transgressions, wilful and presumptuous
choices of evil. Increased knowledge of the nature of sin does not of
itself give strength to overcome it; but, on the contrary, repeated acts
of conscious transgression harden the heart in evil. Men of greatest
mental powers are not of necessity the greatest saints, nor are the
greatest sinners men of least strength of will and understanding.

Not the weak but the strong are the greatest sinners. We do not
pity Nero and Cæsar Borgia for their weakness; we abhor them for
their crimes. Judas was an able man, a practical administrator;
and Satan is a being of great natural endowments. Sin is not
simply a weakness,—it is also a power. A pantheistic philosophy
should worship Satan most of all; for he is the truest type of
godless intellect and selfish strength.

_John 12:6_—Judas, “_having the bag, made away with what was put
therein_.” Judas was set by Christ to do the work he was best
fitted for, and that was best fitted to interest and save him.
Some men may be put into the ministry, because that is the only
work that will prevent their destruction. Pastors should find for
their members work suited to the aptitudes of each. Judas was
tempted, or tried, as all men are, according to his native
propensity. While his motive in objecting to Mary’s generosity was
really avarice, his pretext was charity, or regard for the poor.
Each one of the apostles had his own peculiar gift, and was chosen
because of it. The sin of Judas was not a sin of weakness, or
ignorance, or infirmity. It was a sin of disappointed ambition, of
malice, of hatred for Christ’s self-sacrificing purity.

E. H. Johnson: “Sins are not men’s limitations, but the active
expressions of a perverse nature.” M. F. H. Round, Sec. of Nat.
Prison Association, on examining the record of a thousand
criminals, found that one quarter of them had an exceptionally
fine basis of physical life and strength, while the other three
quarters fell only a little below the average of ordinary
humanity; see The Forum, Sept. 1893. The theory that sin is only
holiness in the making reminds us of the view that the most
objectionable refuse can by ingenious processes be converted into
butter or at least into oleomargarine. It is not true that “tout
comprendre est tout pardonner.” Such doctrine obliterates all
moral distinctions. Gilbert, Bab Ballads, “My Dream”: “I dreamt
that somehow I had come To dwell in Topsy-Turvydom, Where vice is
virtue, virtue vice; Where nice is nasty, nasty nice; Where right
is wrong, and wrong is right; Where white is black and black is
white.”

(_d_) like the sense-theory of sin, it contradicts both conscience and
Scripture by denying human responsibility and by transferring the blame of
sin from the creature to the Creator. This is to explain sin, again, by
denying its existence.

Œdipus said that his evil deeds had been suffered, not done.
Agamemnon, in the Iliad, says the blame belongs, not to himself,
but to Jupiter and to fate. So sin blames everything and everybody
but self. _Gen. 3:12_—“_The woman whom thou gavest to be with me,
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat._” But self-vindicating is
God-accusing. Made imperfect at the start, man cannot help his
sin. By the very fact of his creation he is cut loose from God.
That cannot be sin which is a necessary outgrowth of human nature,
which is not our act but our fate. To all this, the one answer is
found in Conscience. Conscience testifies that sin is not “das
Gewordene,” but “das Gemachte,” and that it was his own act when
man by transgression fell. The Scriptures refer man’s sin, not to
the limitations of his being, but to the free will of man himself.
On the theory here combated, see Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:271-295;
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:123-131; N. R. Wood, The Witness of
Sin, 20-42.

3. Sin as Selfishness.

We hold the essential principle of sin to be selfishness. By selfishness
we mean not simply the exaggerated self-love which constitutes the
antithesis of benevolence, but that choice of self as the supreme end
which constitutes the antithesis of supreme love to God. That selfishness
is the essence of sin may be shown as follows:

A. Love to God is the essence of all virtue. The opposite to this, the
choice of self as the supreme end, must therefore be the essence of sin.

We are to remember, however, that the love to God in which virtue consists
is love for that which is most characteristic and fundamental in God,
namely, his holiness. It is not to be confounded with supreme regard for
God’s interests or for the good of being in general. Not mere benevolence,
but love for God as holy, is the principle and source of holiness in man.
Since the love of God required by the law is of this sort, it not only
does not imply that love, in the sense of benevolence, is the essence of
holiness in God,—it implies rather that holiness, or self-loving and
self-affirming purity, is fundamental in the divine nature. From this
self-loving and self-affirming purity, love properly so-called, or the
self-communicating attribute, is to be carefully distinguished (see vol.
1, pages 271-275).

Bossuet, describing heathendom, says: “Every thing was God but God
himself.” Sin goes further than this, and says: “I am myself all
things,”—not simply as Louis XVI: “I am the state,” but: “I am the
world, the universe, God.” Heinrich Heine: “I am no child. I do
not want a heavenly Father any more.” A French critic of Fichte’s
philosophy said that it was a flight toward the infinite which
began with the ego, and never got beyond it. Kidd, Social
Evolution, 75—“In Calderon’s tragic story, the unknown figure,
which throughout life is everywhere in conflict with the
individual whom it haunts, lifts the mask at last to disclose to
the opponent his own features.” Caird, Evolution of Religion,
1:78—“Every self, once awakened, is naturally a despot, and
‘bears, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.’ ” Every one
has, as Hobbes said, “an infinite desire for gain or glory,” and
can be satisfied with nothing but a whole universe for himself.
Selfishness—“homo homini lupus.” James Martineau: “We ask Comte to
lift the veil from the holy of holies and show us the all-perfect
object of worship,—he produces a looking-glass and shows us
ourselves.” Comte’s religion is a “synthetic idealization of our
existence”—a worship, not of God, but of humanity; and “the
festival of humanity” among Positivists—Walt Whitman’s “I
celebrate myself.” On Comte, see Martineau, Types, 1:499. The most
thorough discussion of the essential principle of sin is that of
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:147-182. He defines sin as “a turning
away from the love of God to self-seeking.”

N. W. Taylor holds that self-love is the primary cause of all
moral action; that selfishness is a different thing, and consists
not in making our own happiness our ultimate end, which we must do
if we are moral beings, but in love of the world, and in
preferring the world to God as our portion or chief good (see N.
W. Taylor, Moral Govt., 1:24-26; 2:20-24, and Rev. Theol.,
134-162; Tyler, Letters on the New Haven Theology, 72). We claim,
on the contrary, that to make our own happiness our ultimate aim
is itself sin, and the essence of sin. As God makes his holiness
the central thing, so we are to live for that, loving self only in
God and for God’s sake. This love for God as holy is the essence
of virtue. The opposite to this, or supreme love for self, is sin.
As Richard Lovelace writes: “I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more,” so Christian friends can say: “Our loves
in higher love endure.” The sinner raises some lower object of
instinct or desire to supremacy, regardless of God and his law,
and this he does for no other reason than to gratify self. On the
distinction between mere benevolence and the love required by
God’s law, see Hovey, God With Us, 187-200; Hopkins, Works, 1:235;
F. W. Robertson, Sermon I. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some
edge to it, else it is none.” See Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
327-370, on duties toward self as a moral end.

Love to God is the essence of all virtue. We are to love God with
all the heart. But what God? Surely, not the false God, the God
who is indifferent to moral distinctions and who treats the wicked
as he treats the righteous. The love which the law requires is
love for the true God, the God of holiness. Such love aims at the
reproduction of God’s holiness in ourselves and in others. We are
to love ourselves only for God’s sake and for the sake of
realizing the divine idea in us. We are to love others only for
God’s sake and for the sake of realizing the divine idea in them.
In our moral progress we, first, love self for our own sake;
secondly, God for our own sake; thirdly, God for his own sake;
fourthly, ourselves for God’s sake. The first is our state by
nature; the second requires prevenient grace; the third,
regenerating grace; and the fourth, sanctifying grace. Only the
last is reasonable self-love. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
27—“Reasonable self-love is a virtue wholly incompatible with what
is commonly called selfishness. Society suffers, not from having
too much of it, but from having too little.” Altruism is not the
whole of duty. Self-realization is equally important. But to care
only for self, like Goethe, is to miss the true self-realization,
which love to God ensures.

Love desires only _the best_ for its object, and the best is
_God_. The golden rule bids us give, not what others desire, but
what they need. _Rom. 15:2_—“_Let each one of us please his
neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying._” Deutsche Liebe:
“Nicht Liebe die fragt: Willst du mein sein? Sondern Liebe die
sagt: Ich muss dein sein.” Sin consists in taking for one’s self
alone and apart from God that in one’s self and in others to which
one has a right only in God and for God’s sake. Mrs. Humphrey
Ward, David Grieve, 403—“How dare a man pluck from the Lord’s
hand, for his wild and reckless use, a soul and body for which he
died? How dare he, the Lord’s bondsman, steal his joy, carrying it
off by himself into the wilderness, like an animal his prey,
instead of asking it at the hands and under the blessing of the
Master? How dare he, a member of the Lord’s body, forget the
whole, in his greed for the one—eternity in his thirst for the
present?” Wordsworth, Prelude, 546—“Delight how pitiable, Unless
this love by a still higher love Be hallowed, love that breathes
not without awe; Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer. By
heaven inspired.... This spiritual love acts not nor can exist
Without imagination, which in truth Is but another name for
absolute power, And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And
reason in her most exalted mood.”

Aristotle says that the wicked have no right to love themselves,
but that the good may. So, from a Christian point of view, we may
say: No unregenerate man can properly respect himself.
Self-respect belongs only to the man who lives in God and who has
God’s image restored to him thereby. True self-love is not love
for the _happiness_ of the self, but for the _worth_ of the self
in God’s sight, and this self-love is the condition of all genuine
and worthy love for others. But true self-love is in turn
conditioned by love to God as holy, and it seeks primarily, not
the happiness, but the holiness, of others. Asquith, Christian
Conception of Holiness, 98, 145, 154, 207—“Benevolence or love is
not the same with altruism. Altruism is instinctive, and has not
its origin in the moral reason. It has utility, and it may even
furnish material for reflection on the part of the moral reason.
But so far as it is not deliberate, not indulged for the sake of
the end, but only for the gratification of the instinct of the
moment, it is not moral.... Holiness is dedication to God, the
Good, not as an external Ruler, but as an internal controller and
transformer of character.... God is a being whose every thought is
love, of whose thoughts not one is for himself, save so far as
himself is not himself, that is, so far as there is a distinction
of persons in the Godhead. Creation is one great unselfish
thought—the bringing into being of creatures who can know the
happiness that God knows.... To the spiritual man holiness and
love are one. Salvation is deliverance from selfishness.” Kaftan,
Dogmatik, 319, 320, regards the essence of sin as consisting, not
in selfishness, but in turning away from God and so from the love
which would cause man to grow in knowledge and likeness to God.
But this seems to be nothing else than choosing self instead of
God as our object and end.

B. All the different forms of sin can be shown to have their root in
selfishness, while selfishness itself, considered as the choice of self as
a supreme end, cannot be resolved into any simpler elements.

(_a_) Selfishness may reveal itself in the elevation to supreme dominion
of any one of man’s natural appetites, desires, or affections. Sensuality
is selfishness in the form of inordinate appetite. Selfish desire takes
the forms respectively of avarice, ambition, vanity, pride, according as
it is set upon property, power, esteem, independence. Selfish affection is
falsehood or malice, according as it hopes to make others its voluntary
servants, or regards them as standing in its way; it is unbelief or enmity
to God, according as it simply turns away from the truth and love of God,
or conceives of God’s holiness as positively resisting and punishing it.

Augustine and Aquinas held the essence of sin to be pride; Luther
and Calvin regarded its essence to be unbelief. Kreibig
(Versöhnungslehre) regards it as “world-love”; still others
consider it as enmity to God. In opposing the view that sensuality
is the essence of sin, Julius Müller says: “Wherever we find
sensuality, there we find selfishness, but we do not find that,
where there is selfishness, there is always sensuality.
Selfishness may embody itself in fleshly lust or inordinate desire
for the creature, but this last cannot bring forth spiritual sins
which have no element of sensuality in them.”

Covetousness or avarice makes, not sensual gratification itself,
but the things that may minister thereto, the object of pursuit,
and in this last chase often loses sight of its original aim.
Ambition is selfish love of power; vanity is selfish love of
esteem. Pride is but the self-complacency, self-sufficiency, and
self-isolation of a selfish spirit that desires nothing so much as
unrestrained independence. Falsehood originates in selfishness,
first as self-deception, and then, since man by sin isolates
himself and yet in a thousand ways needs the fellowship of his
brethren, as deception of others. Malice, the perversion of
natural resentment (together with hatred and revenge), is the
reaction of selfishness against those who stand, or are imagined
to stand, in its way. Unbelief and enmity to God are effects of
sin, rather than its essence; selfishness leads us first to doubt,
and then to hate, the Lawgiver and Judge. Tacitus: “Humani generis
proprium est odisse quem læseris.” In sin, self-affirmation and
self-surrender are not coördinate elements, as Dorner holds, but
the former conditions the latter.

As love to God is love to God’s holiness, so love to man is love
for holiness in man and desire to impart it. In other words, true
love for man is the longing to make man like God. Over against
this normal desire which should fill the heart and inspire the
life, there stands a hierarchy of lower desires which may be
utilized and sanctified by the higher love, but which may assert
their independence and may thus be the occasions of sin. Physical
gratification, money, esteem, power, knowledge, family, virtue,
are proper objects of regard, so long as these are sought for
God’s sake and within the limitations of his will. Sin consists in
turning our backs on God and in seeking any one of these objects
for its own sake; or, which is the same thing, for our own sake.
Appetite gratified without regard to God’s law is lust; the love
of money becomes avarice; the desire for esteem becomes vanity;
the longing for power becomes ambition; the love for knowledge
becomes a selfish thirst for intellectual satisfaction; parental
affection degenerates into indulgence and nepotism; the seeking of
virtue becomes self-righteousness and self-sufficiency. Kaftan,
Dogmatik, 323—“Jesus grants that even the heathen and sinners love
those who love them. But family love becomes family pride;
patriotism comes to stand for country right or wrong; happiness in
one’s calling leads to class distinctions.”

Dante, in his Divine Comedy, divides the Inferno into three great
sections: those in which are punished, respectively, incontinence,
bestiality, and malice. Incontinence—sin of the heart, the
emotions, the affections. Lower down is found bestiality—sin of
the head, the thoughts, the mind, as infidelity and heresy. Lowest
of all is malice—sin of the will, deliberate rebellion, fraud and
treachery. So we are taught that the heart carries the intellect
with it, and that the sin of unbelief gradually deepens into the
intensity of malice. See A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their
Theology, 133—“Dante teaches us that sin is the self-perversion of
the will. If there is any thought fundamental to his system, it is
the thought of freedom. Man is not a waif swept irresistibly
downward on the current; he is a being endowed with power to
resist, and therefore guilty if he yields. Sin is not misfortune,
or disease, or natural necessity; it is wilfulness, and crime, and
self-destruction. The Divine Comedy is, beyond all other poems,
the poem of conscience; and this could not be, if it did not
recognize man as a free agent, the responsible cause of his own
evil acts and his own evil state.” See also Harris, in Jour. Spec.
Philos., 21:350-451; Dinsmore, Atonement in Literature and Life,
69-86.

In Greek tragedy, says Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, the one sin which
the gods hated and would not pardon was ὕβρις—obstinate
self-assertion of mind or will, absence of reverence and
humility—of which we have an illustration in Ajax. George
MacDonald: “A man may be possessed of himself, as of a devil.”
Shakespeare depicts this insolence of infatuation in Shylock,
Macbeth, and Richard III. Troilus and Cressida, 4:4—“Something may
be done that we will not; And sometimes we are devils to
ourselves, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming
on their changeful potency.” Yet Robert G. Ingersoll said that
Shakespeare holds crime to be the mistake of ignorance! N. P.
Willis, Parrhasius: “How like a mounting devil in the heart Rules
unrestrained ambition!”

(_b_) Even in the nobler forms of unregenerate life, the principle of
selfishness is to be regarded as manifesting itself in the preference of
lower ends to that of God’s proposing. Others are loved with idolatrous
affection because these others are regarded as a part of self. That the
selfish element is present even here, is evident upon considering that
such affection does not seek the highest interest of its object, that it
often ceases when unreturned, and that it sacrifices to its own
gratification the claims of God and his law.

Even in the mother’s idolatry of her child, the explorer’s
devotion to science, the sailor’s risk of his life to save
another’s, the gratification sought may be that of a lower
instinct or desire, and any substitution of a lower for the
highest object is non-conformity to law, and therefore sin. H. B.
Smith, System Theology, 277—“Some lower affection is supreme.” And
the underlying motive which leads to this substitution is
self-gratification. There is no such thing as disinterested sin,
for “_every one that loveth is begotten of God_” (_1 John 4:7_).
Thomas Hughes, The Manliness of Christ: Much of the heroism of
battle is simply “resolution in the actors to have their way,
contempt for ease, animal courage which we share with the bulldog
and the weasel, intense assertion of individual will and force,
avowal of the rough-handed man that he has that in him which
enables him to defy pain and danger and death.”

Mozley on Blanco White, in Essays, 2:143: Truth may be sought in
order to absorb truth in self, not for the sake of absorbing self
in truth. So Blanco White, in spite of the pain of separating from
old views and friends, lived for the selfish pleasure of new
discovery, till all his early faith vanished, and even immortality
seemed a dream. He falsely thought that the pain he suffered in
giving up old beliefs was evidence of self-sacrifice with which
God must be pleased, whereas it was the inevitable pain which
attends the victory of selfishness. Robert Browning, Paracelsus,
81—“I still must hoard, and heap, and class all truths With one
ulterior purpose: I must know! Would God translate me to his
throne, believe That I should only listen to his words To further
my own ends.” F. W. Robertson on Genesis, 57—“He who sacrifices
his sense of right, his conscience, for another, sacrifices the
God within him; he is not sacrificing self.... He who prefers his
dearest friend or his beloved child to the call of duty, will soon
show that he prefers himself to his dearest friend, and would not
sacrifice himself for his child.” _Ib._, 91—“In those who love
little, love [for finite beings] is a primary affection,—a
secondary, in those who love much.... The only true affection is
that which is subordinate to a higher.” True love is love for the
soul and its highest, its eternal, interests; love that seeks to
make it holy; love for the sake of God and for the accomplishment
of God’s idea in his creation.

Although we cannot, with Augustine, call the virtues of the
heathen “splendid vices”—for they were relatively good and
useful,—they still, except in possible instances where God’s
Spirit wrought upon the heart, were illustrations of a morality
divorced from love to God, were lacking in the most essential
element demanded by the law, were therefore infected with sin.
Since the law judges all action by the heart from which it
springs, no action of the unregenerate can be other than sin. The
ebony-tree is white in its outer circles of woody fibre; at heart
it is black as ink. There is no unselfishness in the unregenerate
heart, apart from the divine enlightenment and energizing.
Self-sacrifice for the sake of self is selfishness after all.
Professional burglars and bank-robbers are often carefully
abstemious in their personal habits, and they deny themselves the
use of liquor and tobacco while in the active practice of their
trade. Herron, The Larger Christ, 47—“It is as truly immoral to
seek truth out of mere love of knowing it, as it is to seek money
out of love to gain. Truth sought for truth’s sake is an
intellectual vice; it is spiritual covetousness. It is an
idolatry, setting up the worship of abstractions and generalities
in place of the living God.”

(_c_) It must be remembered, however, that side by side with the selfish
will, and striving against it, is the power of Christ, the immanent God,
imparting aspirations and impulses foreign to unregenerate humanity, and
preparing the way for the soul’s surrender to truth and righteousness.

_Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the flesh is enmity against God_”; _Acts
17:27, 28_—“_he is not far from each one of us: for in him we
live, and move, and have our being_”; _Rom. 2:4_—“_the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance_”; _John 1:9_—“_the light which
lighteth every man._” Many generous traits and acts of
self-sacrifice in the unregenerate must be ascribed to the
prevenient grace of God and to the enlightening influence of the
Spirit of Christ. A mother, during the Russian famine, gave to her
children all the little supply of food that came to her in the
distribution, and died that they might live. In her decision to
sacrifice herself for her offspring she may have found her
probation and may have surrendered herself to God. The impulse to
make the sacrifice may have been due to the Holy Spirit, and her
yielding may have been essentially an act of saving faith. In
_Mark 10:21, 22_—“_And Jesus looking upon him loved him ... he
went away sorrowful_”—our Lord apparently loved the young man, not
only for his gifts, his efforts, and his possibilities, but also
for the manifest working in him of the divine Spirit, even while
in his natural character he was without God and without love,
self-ignorant, self-righteous, and self-seeking.

Paul, in like manner, before his conversion, loved and desired
righteousness, provided only that this righteousness might be the
product and achievement of his own will and might reflect honor on
himself; in short, provided only that self might still be
uppermost. To be dependent for righteousness upon another was
abhorrent to him. And yet this very impulse toward righteousness
may have been due to the divine Spirit within him. On Paul’s
experience before conversion, see E. D. Burton, Bib. World, Jan.
1893. Peter objected to the washing of his feet by Jesus (_John
13:8_), not because it humbled the Master too much in the eyes of
the disciple, but because it humbled the disciple too much in his
own eyes. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:218—“Sin is the
violation of the God-willed moral order of the world by the
self-will of the individual.” Tophel on the Holy Spirit, 17—“You
would deeply wound him [the average sinner] if you told him that
his heart, full of sin, is an object of horror to the holiness of
God.” The impulse to repentance, as well as the impulse to
righteousness, is the product, not of man’s own nature, but of the
Christ within him who is moving him to seek salvation.

Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert Browning after she had accepted
his proposal of marriage: “Henceforth I am yours for everything
but to do you harm.” George Harris, Moral Evolution, 138—“Love
seeks the true good of the person loved. It will not minister in
an unworthy way to afford a temporary pleasure. It will not
approve or tolerate that which is wrong. It will not encourage the
coarse, base passions of the one loved. It condemns impurity,
falsehood, selfishness. A parent does not really love his child if
he tolerates the self-indulgence, and does not correct or punish
the faults, of the child.” Hutton: “You might as well say that it
is a fit subject for art to paint the morbid exstasy of cannibals
over their horrid feasts, as to paint lust without love. If you
are to delineate man at all, you must delineate him with his human
nature, and therefore you can never omit from any worthy picture
that conscience which is its crown.”

Tennyson, in In Memoriam, speaks of “Fantastic beauty such as
lurks In some wild poet when he works Without a conscience or an
aim.” Such work may be due to mere human nature. But the lofty
work of true creative genius, and the still loftier acts of men
still unregenerate but conscientious and self-sacrificing, must be
explained by the working in them of the immanent Christ, the life
and light of men. James Martineau, Study, 1:20—“Conscience may act
as human, before it is discovered to be divine.” See J. D. Stoops,
in Jour. Philos., Psych., and Sci. Meth., 2:512—“If there is a
divine life over and above the separate streams of individual
lives, the welling up of this larger life in the experience of the
individual is precisely the point of contact between the
individual person and God.” Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
2:122—“It is this divine element in man, this relationship to God,
which gives to sin its darkest and direst complexion. For such a
life is the turning of a light brighter than the sun into
darkness, the squandering or bartering away of a boundless wealth,
the suicidal abasement, to the things that perish, of a nature
destined by its very constitution and structure for participation
in the very being and blessedness of God.”

On the various forms of sin as manifestations of selfishness, see
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:147-182; Jonathan Edwards, Works,
2:268, 269; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:5, 6; Baird, Elohim
Revealed, 243-262; Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, 11-91;
Hopkins, Moral Science, 86-156. On the Roman Catholic “Seven
Deadly Sins” (Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust),
see Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexikon, and Orby Shipley, Theory
about Sin, preface, xvi-xviii.

C. This view accords best with Scripture.

(_a_) The law requires love to God as its all-embracing requirement. (_b_)
The holiness of Christ consisted in this, that he sought not his own will
or glory, but made God his supreme end. (_c_) The Christian is one who has
ceased to live for self. (_d_) The tempter’s promise is a promise of
selfish independence. (_e_) The prodigal separates himself from his
father, and seeks his own interest and pleasure. (_f_) The “man of sin”
illustrates the nature of sin, in “opposing and exalting himself against
all that is called God.”

(_a_) _Mat. 22:37-39_—the command of love to God and man; _Rom.
13:8-10_—“_love therefore is the fulfilment of the law_”; _Gal.
5:14_—“_the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself_”; _James 2:8_—“_the royal
law._” (_b_) _John 5:30_—“_my judgment is righteous; because I
seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me_”;
_7:18_—“_He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory: but
he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true,
and no unrighteousness is in him_”; _Rom. 15:3_—“_Christ also
pleased not himself._” (_c_) _Rom. 14:7_—“_none of us liveth to
himself, and none dieth to himself_”; _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he died for
all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves,
but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again_”; _Gal.
2:20_—“_I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I
that live, but Christ liveth in me._” Contrast _2 Tim.
3:2_—“_lovers of self._” (_d_) _Gen. 3:5_—“_ye shall be as God,
knowing good and evil._” (_e_) _Luke 15:12, 13_—“_give me the
portion of thy substance ... gathered all together and took his
journey into a far country._” (_f_) _2 Thess. 2:3, 4_—“_the man of
sin ... the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth
himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so
that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as
God._”

Contrast “_the man of sin_” who “_exalteth himself_” (_2 Thess.
2:3, 4_) with the Son of God who “_emptied himself_” (_Phil.
2:7_). On “_the man of sin_”, see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap.
Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. Ritchie, Darwin, and Hegel, 24—“We
are conscious of sin, because we know that our true self is God,
from whom we are severed. No ethics is possible unless we
recognize an ideal for all human effort in the presence of the
eternal Self which any account of conduct presupposes.” John
Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:53-73—“Here, as in all
organic life, the individual member or organ has no independent or
exclusive life, and the attempt to attain to it is fatal to
itself.” Milton describes man as “affecting Godhead, and so losing
all.” Of the sinner, we may say with Shakespeare, Coriolanus,
5:4—“He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne
in.... There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male
tiger.” No one of us, then, can sign too early “the declaration of
dependence.” Both Old School and New School theologians agree that
sin is selfishness; see Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, the younger
Edwards, Finney, Taylor. See also A. H. Strong, Christ in
Creation, 287-292.

Sin, therefore, is not merely a negative thing, or an absence of love to
God. It is a fundamental and positive choice or preference of self instead
of God, as the object of affection and the supreme end of being. Instead
of making God the centre of his life, surrendering himself unconditionally
to God and possessing himself only in subordination to God’s will, the
sinner makes self the centre of his life, sets himself directly against
God, and constitutes his own interest the supreme motive and his own will
the supreme rule.

We may follow Dr. E. G. Robinson in saying that, while sin as a state is
unlikeness to God, as a principle is opposition to God, and as an act is
transgression of God’s law, the essence of it always and everywhere is
selfishness. It is therefore not something external, or the result of
compulsion from without; it is a depravity of the affections and a
perversion of the will, which constitutes man’s inmost character.

See Harris, in Bib. Sac., 18:148—“Sin is essentially egoism or
selfism, putting self in God’s place. It has four principal
characteristics or manifestations: (1) self-sufficiency, instead
of faith; (2) self-will, instead of submission; (3) self-seeking,
instead of benevolence; (4) self-righteousness, instead of
humility and reverence.” All sin is either explicit or implicit
“_enmity against God_” (_Rom. 8:7_). All true confessions are like
David’s (_Ps. 51:4_)—“_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And
done that which is evil in thy sight._” Of all sinners it might be
said that they “_Fight neither with small nor great, save only
with the king of Israel_” (_1 K. 22:31_).

Not every sinner is conscious of this enmity. Sin is a principle
in course of development. It is not yet “_full-grown_” (_James
1:15_—“_the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death_”).
Even now, as James Martineau has said: “If it could be known that
God was dead, the news would cause but little excitement in the
streets of London and Paris.” But this indifference easily grows,
in the presence of threatening and penalty, into violent hatred to
God and positive defiance of his law. If the sin which is now
hidden in the sinner’s heart were but permitted to develop itself
according to its own nature, it would hurl the Almighty from his
throne, and would set up its own kingdom upon the ruins of the
moral universe. Sin is world-destroying, as well as
God-destroying, for it is inconsistent with the conditions which
make being as a whole possible; see Royce, World and Individual,
2:366; Dwight, Works, sermon 80.

Section III.—Universality Of Sin.

We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of
the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is
universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin
in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect
as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.

I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed
acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.

1. _Proof from Scripture._

The universality of transgression is:

(_a_) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.

_1 K. 8:46_—“_there is no man that sinneth not_”; _Ps.
143:2_—“_enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy
sight no man living is righteous_”; _Prov. 20:9_—“_Who can say, I
have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?_”; _Eccl.
7:20_—“_Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth
good, and sinneth not_”; _Luke 11:13_—“_If ye, then, being evil_”;
_Rom. 3:10, 12_—“_There is none righteous, no, not one.... There
is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one_”; _19, 20_—“_that
every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under
the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the
knowledge of sin_”; _23_—“_for all have sinned, and fall short of
the glory of God_”; _Gal. 3:22_—“_the scripture shut up all things
under sin_”; _James 3:2_—“_For in many things we all stumble_”; _1
John 1:8_—“_If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us._” Compare _Mat. 6:12_—“_forgive us our
debts_”—given as a prayer for all men; _14_—“_if ye forgive men
their trespasses_”—the condition of our own forgiveness.

(_b_) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement,
regeneration, and repentance.

Universal need of atonement: _Mark 16:16_—“_He that believeth and
is baptised shall be saved_” (Mark 16:9-20, though probably not
written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority); _John
3:16_—“_God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish_”;
_6:50_—“_This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a
man may eat thereof, and not die_”; _12:47_—“_I came not to judge
the world, but to save the world_”; _Acts 4:12_—“_in none other is
there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven,
that is given among men, wherein we must be saved._” Universal
need of regeneration: _John 3:3, 5_—“_Except one be born anew, he
cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God._” Universal
need of repentance: _Acts 17:30_—“_commandeth men that they should
all everywhere repent._” Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her
“Unity of Good,” speaks of “the illusion which calls sin real and
man a sinner needing a Savior.”

(_c_) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept
Christ.

_John 3:18_—“_he that believeth not hath been judged already,
because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son
of God_”; _36_—“_he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him_”; Compare _1 John 5:19_—“_the
whole world lieth in_ [_i. e._, in union with] _the evil one_”;
see Annotated Paragraph Bible, _in loco_. Kaftan, Dogmatik,
318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor,
not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in
all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies
as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline,
avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous
activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and
all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the
heart and as the satisfaction of one’s own will and desire. This
is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of
which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man
universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”

(_d_) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe
to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a
closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a
merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and
impulse due to preliminary workings of God’s Spirit, or a goodness
resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God’s method of
salvation.

In _Mat 9:12_—“_They that are whole have no need of a physician,
but they that are sick_”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem
are whole; _cf._ _13_—“_I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners_”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my
salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek
it” (An. Par. Bib.). In _Luke 10:30-37_—the parable of the good
Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a
sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of
Israel. In _Acts 10:35_—“_in every nation he that feareth him, and
worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him_”—Peter declares, not
that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him
through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to
know (1) _that_ he was saved, and (2) _how_ he was saved; and
Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his
salvation in Christ. In _Rom. 2:14_—“_for when Gentiles that have
not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having
the law, are a law unto themselves_”—it is only said that in
certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they
have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they
perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says
immediately after (_Rom. 3:9_)—“_we before laid to the charge both
of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin._”

So with regard to the words “_perfect_” and “_upright_,” as
applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the
doctrine of Sanctification, that the word “_perfect_,” as applied
to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a
relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of
Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who
has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his
chief defects of character. See _1 Cor. 2:6_—“_we speak wisdom
among the perfect_” (Am. Rev.: “_among them that are
full-grown_”); _Phil. 3:15_—“_let us therefore, as many as are
perfect, be thus minded_”—_i. e._, to press toward the goal—a goal
expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (_v.
12-14_).

“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.” God is the “spark
that fires our clay.” S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is
better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind
of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has
been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and
fidelity to duty among men.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses
and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ,
before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and
has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life
of its life.” To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we
attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses
are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are
influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more
than its original darkness.

2. _Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind._

(_a_) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the
universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.

See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339.
Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained
eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the
public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing
their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was
too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”

(_b_) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and,
in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that
every other man has come short of it also.

Chinese proverb: “There are but two good men; one is dead, and the
other is not yet born.” Idaho proverb: “The only good Indian is a
dead Indian.” But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr.
Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said: “I never but once in
India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin
interrupted me and said: ‘I deny your premisses. I am not a
sinner. I do not need to do better.’ For a moment I was abashed.
Then I said: ‘But what do your neighbors say?’ Thereupon one cried
out: ‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another: ‘He defrauded a
widow of her inheritance.’ The Brahmin went out of the house, and
I never saw him again.” A great nephew of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few
lines an “Essay on the Life of Man,” which ran as follows: “A
man’s life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the
first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and
rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the
second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and
rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and
prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making
his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of
dotage.”

(_c_) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of
selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form
of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims: “No man is
perfect”; “Every man has his weak side”, or “his price”; and every great
name in literature has attested its truth.

Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in
another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked,
ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself
to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a
hand; some one must draw us out.” Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the
things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the
worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we
desire the things that are denied.” Cicero: “Nature has given us
faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our
immoralities.”

Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where’s that palace whereinto foul
things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some
uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and
law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?” Henry VI.,
II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.” Hamlet, 2:2,
compares God’s influence to the sun which “breeds maggots in a
dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible
for the corruption in man’s heart and the evil that comes from it,
than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds
in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.” Timon of Athens,
1:2—“Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?”

Goethe: “I see no fault committed which I too might not have
committed.” Dr. Johnson: “Every man knows that of himself which he
dare not tell to his dearest friend.” Thackeray showed himself a
master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue
belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents
life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act
from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to
be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes
before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand
any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:
“God knows I’m no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I
could be.” Huxley: “The best men of the best epochs are simply
those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”
And he speaks of “the infinite wickedness” which has attended the
course of human history. Matthew Arnold: “What mortal, when he
saw, Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare
tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law: The
inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to
the end?” Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon: “The men of ability
do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good
to themselves first.” “Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday,
if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their
fellows and sell their hides.” Yet Confucius declares that “man is
born good.” He confounds conscience with will—the _sense_ of right
with the _love_ of right. Dean Swift’s worthy sought many years
for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature
of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.

Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral
character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive
of his actions, _i. e._, that he has been to some degree selfish;
(3) that he has committed at least one known violation of
conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those
theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the
first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that
he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple
fact that “no human creature, in any country or grade of
civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his
knowledge of God.”

3. _Proof from Christian experience._

(_a_) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize
evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate
and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.

See Goodwin’s experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin,
member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his
conversion, says: “An abundant discovery was made to me of my
inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what
greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.” Töllner’s
experience, in Martensen’s Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to
Pelagianism, says: “I look into my own heart and I see with
penitent sorrow that I must in God’s sight accuse myself of all
the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate
transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly
guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.” John Newton sees
the murderer led to execution, and says: “There, but for the grace
of God, goes John Newton.” Count de Maistre: “I do not know what
the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man,
and that is frightful.” Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of
his professorship at Halle, said to his students: “In review of
God’s manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for
is the conviction of sin.”

Roper Ascham: “By experience we find out a short way, by a long
wandering.” _Luke 15:25-32_ is sometimes referred to as indicating
that there are some of God’s children who never wander from the
Father’s house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The
elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J.
Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of
the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends
apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to
escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full
development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and
afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of
swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so
full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says: ‘_Lo, these many years
do I serve thee_’ (δουλεύω—as a bondservant), ‘_and I never
transgressed a commandment of thine._’ Are the father’s
commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love
from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his
father and unsympathetic toward his brother.” Sir J. R. Seelye,
Ecce Homo: “No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”
Wordsworth: “Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or
more.”

(_b_) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves
as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any
consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as
proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.

It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by
the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see
more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are
the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny
that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions,
confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He
glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues. “No man,” he
says, “can come to the throne of God and say: ‘I am a better man
than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when
it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with
this book in my hand, and I will say aloud: ‘Here is what I did,
what I thought, and what I was.’ ” “Ah,” said he, just before he
expired, “how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason
for remorse or self-reproach!” And then, addressing himself to the
Almighty, he said: “Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to
give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it
proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!” Yet,
in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he
advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty
years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if
not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital
as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of
strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent
appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean,
vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in
his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in
the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap.
Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is
taken.

Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious
revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying
that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission
rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of
loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the
justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this
earthly sphere, to “wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and
lie down to pleasant dreams.” And yet no man of his time was more
arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane,
when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the
election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing,
declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was
a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the
age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over
again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he
had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said: “I have never
been a great sinner.” Yet at that very time he was living in open
adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams: “With all his conscience and one
eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.” Contrast
the utterance of the apostle Paul: _1 Tim. 1:15_—“_Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief_.” It has
been well said that “the greatest of sins is to be conscious of
none.” Rowland Hill: “The devil makes little of sin, that he may
retain the sinner.”

The following reasons may be suggested for men’s unconsciousness
of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or
principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God’s
providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full
development. 3. God’s judgments against sin have not yet been made
manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5.
Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to
look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is
unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great
and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature
of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no
salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of
God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the
gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead
them to accept the Savior. _Ps. 90:8_—“_Thou hast set ... Our
secret sins in the light of thy countenance_” = man’s inner
sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the
holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into
the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into
painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259;
Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men’s
Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.

II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses a
corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is itself sin.

1. _Proof from Scripture._

A. The sinful acts and dispositions of men are referred to, and explained
by, a corrupt nature.

By “nature” we mean that which is _born_ in a man, that which he
has by birth. That there is an inborn corrupt state, from which
sinful acts and dispositions flow, is evident from _Luke
6:43-45_—“_there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt
fruit.... the evil man out of the evil treasure_ [of his heart]
_bringeth forth that which is evil_”; _Mat. 12:34_—“_Ye offspring
of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?_” _Ps.
58:3_—“_The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as
soon as they are born, speaking lies._”

This corrupt nature (_a_) belongs to man from the first moment of his
being; (_b_) underlies man’s consciousness; (_c_) cannot be changed by
man’s own power; (_d_) first constitutes him a sinner before God; (_e_) is
the common heritage of the race.

(_a_) _Ps. 51:5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in
sin did my mother conceive me_”—here David is confessing, not his
mother’s sin, but his own sin; and he declares that this sin goes
back to the very moment of his conception. Tholuck, quoted by H.
B. Smith, System, 281—“David confesses that sin begins with the
life of man; that not only his works, but the man himself, is
guilty before God.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:94—“David mentions the
fact that he was born sinful, as an aggravation of his particular
act of adultery, and not as an excuse for it.” (_b_) _Ps.
19:12_—“_Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden
faults_”; _51:6, 7_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom.
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow._” (_c_) _Jer. 13:23_—“_Can the Ethiopian
change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do
good, that are accustomed to do evil_”; _Rom. 7:24_—“_Wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?_”
(_d_) _Ps. 51:6_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts_”; _Jer. 17:9_—“_The heart is deceitful above all things and
it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? I, Jehovah, search the
mind, I try the heart,_”—only God can fully know the native and
incurable depravity of the human heart; see Annotated Paragraph
Bible, _in loco_, (_e_) _Job 14:4_—“_Who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean? not one_”; _John 3:6_—“_That which is born of
the flesh is flesh,_” _i. e._, human nature sundered from God.
Pope, Theology, 2:53—“Christ, who knew what was in man, says: ‘_If
ye then, being evil_’ (_Mat. 7:11_), and ‘_That which is born of
the flesh is flesh_’ (_John 3:6_), that is—putting the two
together—‘men are evil, because they are born evil.’ ”

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of The Minister’s Black Veil portrays
the isolation of every man’s deepest life, and the awe which any
visible assertion of that isolation inspires. C. P. Cranch: “We
are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep
communing fails To remove the shadowy screen.” In the heart of
every one of us is that fearful “black drop,” which the Koran says
the angel showed to Mohammed. Sin is like the taint of scrofula in
the blood, which shows itself in tumors, in consumption, in
cancer, in manifold forms, but is everywhere the same organic
evil. Byron spoke truly of “This ineradicable taint of sin, this
boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree.”

E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 161, 162—“The objection that
conscience brings no charge of guilt against inborn depravity,
however true it may be of the nature in its passive state, is
seen, when the nature is roused to activity, to be unfounded. This
faculty, on the contrary, lends support to the doctrine it is
supposed to overthrow. When the conscience holds intelligent
inquisition upon single acts, it soon discovers that these are
mere accessories to crime, while the principal is hidden away
beyond the reach of consciousness. In following up its
inquisition, it in due time extorts the exclamation of David: _Ps.
51:5_—‘_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my
mother conceive me._’ Conscience traces guilt to its seat in the
inherited nature.”

B. All men are declared to be by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). Here
“nature” signifies something inborn and original, as distinguished from
that which is subsequently acquired. The text implies that: (_a_) Sin is a
nature, in the sense of a congenital depravity of the will. (_b_) This
nature is guilty and condemnable,—since God’s wrath rests only upon that
which deserves it. (_c_) All men participate in this nature and in this
consequent guilt and condemnation.

_Eph. 2:3_—“_were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest._”
Shedd: “Nature here is not substance created by God, but
corruption of that substance, which corruption is created by man.”
“Nature” (from _nascor_) may denote anything inborn, and the term
may just as properly designate inborn evil tendencies and state,
as inborn faculties or substance. “_By nature_” therefore = “by
birth”; compare _Gal. 2:15_—“_Jews by nature._” E. G. Robinson:
“Nature = not οὐσία, or essence, but only qualification of
essence, as something born in us. There is just as much difference
in babes, from the beginning of their existence, as there is in
adults. If sin is defined as ‘voluntary transgression of known
law,’ the definition of course disposes of original sin.” But if
sin is a selfish state of the will, such a state is demonstrably
inborn. Aristotle speaks of some men as born to be savages (φύσει
βάρβαροι), and of others as destined by nature to be slaves (φύσει
δοῦλοι). Here evidently is a congenital aptitude and disposition.
Similarly we can interpret Paul’s words as declaring nothing less
than that men are possessed at birth of an aptitude and
disposition which is the object of God’s just displeasure.

The opposite view can be found in Stevens, Pauline Theology,
152-157. Principal Fairbairn also says that inherited sinfulness
“is _not_ transgression, and is _without_ guilt.” Ritschl, Just.
and Recon., 344—“The predicate ‘children of wrath’ refers to the
former actual transgression of those who now as Christians have
the right to apply to themselves that divine purpose of grace
which is the antithesis of wrath.” Meyer interprets the verse; “We
_become_ children of wrath by following a natural propensity.” He
claims the doctrine of the apostle to be, that man incurs the
divine wrath by his _actual_ sin, when he submits his will to the
inborn sin principle. So N. W. Taylor, Concio ad Clerum, quoted in
H. B. Smith, System, 281—“We were by nature such that we became
through our own act children of wrath.” “But,” says Smith, “if the
apostle had meant this, he could have said so; there is a proper
Greek word for ‘became’; the word which is used can only be
rendered ‘were.’ ” So _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your children
unclean_”—implies that, apart from the operations of grace, all
men are defiled in virtue of their very birth from a corrupt
stock. Cloth is first died in the wool, and then dyed again after
the weaving. Man is a “double-dyed villain.” He is corrupted by
nature and afterwards by practice. The colored physician in New
Orleans advertised that his method was “first to remove the
disease, and then to eradicate the system.” The New School method
of treating this text is of a similar sort. Beginning with a
definition of sin which excludes from that category all inborn
states of the will, it proceeds to vacate of their meaning the
positive statements of Scripture.

For the proper interpretation of _Eph. 2:3_, see Julius Müller,
Doct. of Sin, 2:278, and Commentaries of Harless and Olshausen.
See also Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:212 _sq._; Thomasius, Christi
Person und Werk, 1:289; and an excellent note in the Expositor’s
Greek N.T., _in loco_. _Per contra_, see Reuss, Christ. Theol. in
Apost. Age, 2:29, 79-84; Weiss, Bib. Theol. N.T., 239.

C. Death, the penalty of sin, is visited even upon those who have never
exercised a personal and conscious choice (Rom. 5:12-14). This text
implies that (_a_) Sin exists in the case of infants prior to moral
consciousness, and therefore in the nature, as distinguished from the
personal activity. (_b_) Since infants die, this visitation of the penalty
of sin upon them marks the ill-desert of that nature which contains in
itself, though undeveloped, the germs of actual transgression. (_c_) It is
therefore certain that a sinful, guilty, and condemnable nature belongs to
all mankind.

_Rom. 5:12-14_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into
the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all
men, for that all sinned:—for until the law sin was in the world;
but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death
reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned
after the likeness of Adam’s transgression_”—that is, over those
who, like infants, had never personally and consciously sinned.
See a more full treatment of these last words in connection with
an exegesis of the whole passage—_Rom. 5:12-19_—under Imputation
of Sin, pages 625-627.

N. W. Taylor maintained that infants, prior to moral agency, are
not subjects of the moral government of God, any more than are
animals. In this he disagreed with Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins,
Dwight, Smalley, Griffin. See Tyler, Letters on N. E. Theol., 8,
132-142—“To say that animals die, and therefore death can be no
proof of sin in infants, is to take infidel ground. The infidel
has just as good a right to say: Because animals die without being
sinners, therefore adults may. If death may reign to such an
alarming extent over the human race and yet be no proof of sin,
then you adopt the principle that death may reign to any extent
over the universe, yet never can be made a proof of sin in any
case.” We reserve our full proof that physical death is the
penalty of sin to the section on Penalty as one of the
Consequences of Sin.

2. _Proof from Reason._

Three facts demand explanation: (_a_) The universal existence of sinful
dispositions in every mind, and of sinful acts in every life. (_b_) The
preponderating tendencies to evil, which necessitate the constant
education of good impulses, while the bad grow of themselves. (_c_) The
yielding of the will to temptation, and the actual violation of the divine
law, in the case of every human being so soon as he reaches moral
consciousness.

The fundamental selfishness of man is seen in childhood, when
human nature acts itself out spontaneously. It is difficult to
develop courtesy in children. There can be no true courtesy
without regard for man as man and willingness to accord to each
man his place and right as a son of God equal with ourselves. But
children wish to please themselves without regard to others. The
mother asks the child: “Why don’t you do right instead of doing
wrong?” and the child answers: “Because it makes me so tired,” or
“Because I do wrong without trying.” Nothing runs itself, unless
it is going down hill. “No other animal does things habitually
that will injure and destroy it, and does them from the love of
it. But man does this, and he is born to do it, he does it from
birth. As the seedlings of the peach-tree are all peaches, not
apples, and those of thorns are all thorns, not grapes, so all the
descendants of man are born with evil in their natures. That sin
continually comes back to us, like a dog or cat that has been
driven away, proves that our hearts are its home.”

Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s novel, Robert Elsmere, represents the
milk-and-water school of philanthropists. “Give man a chance,”
they say; “give him good example and favorable environment and he
will turn out well. He is more sinned against than sinning. It is
the outward presence of evil that drives men to evil courses.” But
God’s indictment is found in _Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the flesh is
enmity against God._” G. P. Fisher: “Of the ideas of natural
religion, Plato, Plutarch and Cicero found in the fact that they
are in man’s _reason_, but not obeyed and realized in man’s
_will_, the most convincing evidence that humanity is at schism
with itself, and therefore depraved, fallen, and unable to deliver
itself. The reason why many moralists fail and grow bitter and
hateful is that they do not take account of this state of sin.”

Reason seeks an underlying principle which will reduce these multitudinous
phenomena to unity. As we are compelled to refer common physical and
intellectual phenomena to a common physical and intellectual nature, so we
are compelled to refer these common moral phenomena to a common moral
nature, and to find in it the cause of this universal, spontaneous, and
all-controlling opposition to God and his law. The only possible solution
of the problem is this, that the common nature of mankind is corrupt, or,
in other words, that the human will, prior to the single volitions of the
individual, is turned away from God and supremely set upon
self-gratification. This unconscious and fundamental direction of the
will, as the source of actual sin, must itself be sin; and of this sin all
mankind are partakers.

The greatest thinkers of the world have certified to the
correctness of this conclusion. See Aristotle’s doctrine of “the
slope,” described in Chase’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics,
XXXV and 32—“In regard to moral virtue, man stands on a slope. His
appetites and passions gravitate downward; his reason attracts him
upward. Conflict occurs. A step upward, and reason gains what
passion has lost; but the reverse is the case if he steps
downward. The tendency in the former case is to the entire
subjection of passion; in the latter case, to the entire
suppression of reason. The slope will terminate upwards in a level
summit where men’s steps will be secure, or downwards in an
irretrievable plunge over the precipice. Continual self-control
leads to absolute self-mastery; continual failure, to the utter
absence of self-control. But _all we can see is the slope_. No man
is ever at the ἠρεμία of the summit, nor can we say that a man has
irretrievably fallen into the abyss. How it is that men constantly
act against their own convictions of what is right, and their
previous determinations to follow right, is a mystery Which
Aristotle discusses, but leaves unexplained.

“Compare the passage in the Ethics, 1:11—‘Clearly there is in them
[men], besides the Reason, some other Inborn principle (πεφυκός)
which fights with and strains against the Reason.... There is in
the soul also somewhat besides the Reason which is opposed to this
and goes against it.’—Compare this passage with Paul, in _Rom.
7:23_—‘_I see a different law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of
sin which is in my members._’ But as Aristotle does not explain
the cause, so he suggests no cure. Revelation alone can account
for the disease, or point out the remedy.”

Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:102—“Aristotle makes the significant
and almost surprising observation, that the character which has
become evil by guilt can just as little be thrown off again at
mere volition, as the person who has made himself sick by his own
fault can become well again at mere volition; once become evil or
sick, it stands no longer within his discretion to cease to be so;
a stone, when once cast, cannot be caught back from its flight;
and so is it with the character that has become evil.” He does not
tell “how a reformation in character is possible,—moreover, he
does not concede to evil any other than an individual
effect,—knows nothing of any natural solidarity of evil in
self-propagating, morally degenerated races” (Nic. Eth., 3:6, 7;
5:12; 7:2, 3; 10:10). The good nature, he says, “is evidently not
within our power, but is by some kind of divine causality
conferred upon the truly happy.”

Plato speaks of “that blind, many-headed wild beast of all that is
evil within thee.” He repudiates the idea that men are naturally
good, and says that, if this were true, all that would be needed
to make them holy would be to shut them up, from their earliest
years, so that they might not be corrupted by others. Republic, 4
(Jowett’s translation, 11:276)—“There is a rising up of part of
the soul against the whole of the soul.” Meno, 89—“The cause of
corruption is from our parents, so that we never relinquish their
evil way, or escape the blemish of their evil habit.” Horace, Ep.,
1:10—“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” Latin
proverb: “Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.” Pascal: “We are born
unrighteous; for each one tends to himself, and the bent toward
self is the beginning of all disorder.” Kant, in his Metaphysical
Principles of Human Morals, speaks of “the indwelling of an evil
principle side by side with the good one, or the radical evil of
human nature,” and of “the contest between the good and the evil
principles for the control of man.” “Hegel, pantheist as he was,
declared that original sin is the nature of every man,—every man
begins with it” (H. B. Smith).

Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, 4:3—“All is oblique: There’s nothing
level in our cursed natures, But direct villainy.” All’s Well,
4:3—“As we are in ourselves, how weak we are! Merely our own
traitors.” Measure for Measure, 1:2—“Our natures do pursue, Like
rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil, and when
we drink, we die.” Hamlet, 3:1—“Virtue cannot so inoculate our old
stock, but we shall relish of it.” Love’s Labor Lost, 1:1—“Every
man with his affects is born, Not by might mastered, but by
special grace.” Winter’s Tale, 1:2—“We should have answered Heaven
boldly, Not guilty; the imposition cleared Hereditary ours”—that
is, provided our hereditary connection with Adam had not made us
guilty. On the theology of Shakespeare, see A. H. Strong, Great
Poets, 196-211—“If any think it irrational to believe in man’s
depravity, guilt, and need of supernatural redemption, they must
also be prepared to say that Shakespeare did not understand human
nature.”

S. T. Coleridge, Omniana, at the end: “It is a fundamental article
of Christianity that I am a fallen creature ... that an evil
ground existed in my will, previously to any act or assignable
moment of time in my consciousness; I am born a child of wrath.
This fearful mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even
conceive the possibility of it; but I know that it is so, ... and
what is real must be possible.” A sceptic who gave his children no
religious training, with the view of letting them each in mature
years choose a faith for himself, reproved Coleridge for letting
his garden run to weeds; but Coleridge replied, that he did not
think it right to prejudice the soil in favor of roses and
strawberries. Van Oosterzee: Rain and sunshine make weeds grow
more quickly, but could not draw them out of the soil if the seeds
did not lie there already; so evil education and example draw out
sin, but do not implant it. Tennyson, Two Voices: “He finds a
baseness in his blood, At such strange war with what is good, He
cannot do the thing he would.” Robert Browning, Gold Hair: a
Legend of Pornic: “The faith that launched point-blank her dart At
the head of a lie—taught Original Sin, The corruption of Man’s
Heart.” Taine, Ancien Régime: “Savage, brigand and madman each of
us harbors, in repose or manacled, but always living, in the
recesses of his own heart.” Alexander Maclaren: “A great mass of
knotted weeds growing in a stagnant pool is dragged toward you as
you drag one filament.” Draw out one sin, and it brings with it
the whole matted nature of sin.

Chief Justice Thompson, of Pennsylvania: “If those who preach had
been lawyers previous to entering the ministry, they would know
and say far more about the depravity of the human heart than they
do. The old doctrine of total depravity is the only thing that can
explain the falsehoods, the dishonesties, the licentiousness, and
the murders which are so rife in the world. Education, refinement,
and even a high order of talent, cannot overcome the inclination
to evil which exists in the heart, and has taken possession of the
very fibres of our nature.” See Edwards, Original Sin, in Works,
2:309-510; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:259-307; Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 2:231-238; Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 226-236.

Section IV.—Origin Of Sin In The Personal Act Of Adam.

With regard to the origin of this sinful nature which is common to the
race, and which is the occasion of all actual transgressions, reason
affords no light. The Scriptures, however, refer the origin of this nature
to that free act of our first parents by which they turned away from God,
corrupted themselves, and brought themselves under the penalties of the
law.

Chandler, Spirit of Man, 76—“It is vain to attempt to sever the
moral life of Christianity from the historical fact in which it is
rooted. We may cordially assent to the assertion that the whole
value of historical events is in their ideal significance. But in
many cases, part of that which the idea signifies is the fact that
it has been exhibited in history. The value and interest of the
conquest of Greece over Persia lie in the significant idea of
freedom and intelligence triumphing over despotic force; but
surely a part, and a very important part, of the idea, is the fact
that this triumph was won in a historical past, and the
encouragement for the present which rests upon that fact. So too,
the value of Christ’s resurrection lies in its immense moral
significance as a principle of life; but an essential part of that
very significance is the fact that the principle was actually
realized by One in whom mankind was summed up and expressed, and
by whom, therefore, the power of realizing it is conferred on all
who receive him.”

As it is important for us to know that redemption is not only
ideal but actual, so it is important for us to know that sin is
not an inevitable accompaniment of human nature, but that it had a
historical beginning. Yet no _a priori_ theory should prejudice
our examination of the facts. We would preface our consideration
of the Scriptural account, therefore, by stating that our view of
inspiration would permit us to regard that account as inspired,
even if it were mythical or allegorical. As God can use all
methods of literary composition, so he can use all methods of
instructing mankind that are consistent with essential truth.
George Adam Smith observes that the myths and legends of primitive
folk-lore are the intellectual equivalents of later philosophies
and theories of the universe, and that “at no time has revelation
refused to employ such human conceptions for the investiture and
conveyance of the higher spiritual truths.” Sylvester Burnham:
“Fiction and myth have not yet lost their value for the moral and
religious teacher. What a knowledge of his own nature has shown
man to be good for his own use, God surely may also have found to
be good for his use. Nor would it of necessity affect the value of
the Bible if the writer, in using for his purpose myth or fiction,
supposed that he was using history. Only when the value of the
truth of the teaching depends upon the historicity of the alleged
fact, does it become impossible to use myth or fiction for the
purpose of teaching.” See vol. 1, page 241 of this work, with
quotations from Denney, Studies in Theology, 218, and Gore, in Lux
Mundi, 356. Euripides: “Thou God of all! infuse light into the
souls of men, whereby they may be enabled to know what is the root
from which all their evils spring, and by what means they may
avoid them!”

I. The Scriptural Account of the Temptation and Fall in Genesis 3:1-7.

1. Its general, character not mythical or allegorical, but historical.

We adopt this view for the following reasons:—(_a_) There is no intimation
in the account itself that it is not historical. (_b_) As a part of a
historical book, the presumption is that it is itself historical. (_c_)
The later Scripture writers refer to it as a veritable history even in its
details. (_d_) Particular features of the narrative, such as the placing
of our first parents in a garden and the speaking of the tempter through a
serpent-form, are incidents suitable to man’s condition of innocent but
untried childhood. (_e_) This view that the narrative is historical does
not forbid our assuming that the trees of life and of knowledge were
symbols of spiritual truths, while at the same time they were outward
realities.

See _John 8:44_—“_Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts
of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for
he is a liar and the father thereof_”; _2 Cor. 11:3_—“_the serpent
beguiled Eve in his craftiness_”; _Rev. 20:2_—“_the dragon, the
old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan._” H. B. Smith, System,
261—“If Christ’s temptation and victory over Satan were historical
events, there seems to be no ground for supposing that the first
temptation was not a historical event.” We believe in the unity
and sufficiency of Scripture. We moreover regard the testimony of
Christ and the apostles as conclusive with regard to the
historicity of the account in Genesis. We assume a divine
superintendence in the choice of material by its author, and the
fulfilment to the apostles of Christ’s promise that they should be
guided into the truth. Paul’s doctrine of sin is so manifestly
based upon the historical character of the Genesis story, that the
denial of the one must naturally lead to the denial of the other.
John Milton writes, in his Areopagitica: “It was from out of the
rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as
two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And
perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, that is to say, of
knowing good by evil.” He should have learned to know evil as God
knows it—as a thing possible, hateful, and forever rejected. He
actually learned to know evil as Satan knows it—by making it
actual and matter of bitter experience.

Infantile and innocent man found his fit place and work in a
garden. The language of appearances is doubtless used. Satan might
enter into a brute-form, and might appear to speak through it. In
all languages, the stories of brutes speaking show that such a
temptation is congruous with the condition of early man. Asiatic
myths agree in representing the serpent as the emblem of the
spirit of evil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the
symbol of God’s right of eminent domain, and indicated that all
belonged to him. It is not necessary to suppose that it was known
by this name before the Fall. By means of it man came to know
good, by the loss of it; to know evil, by bitter experience; C. H.
M.: “To know good, without the power to do it; to know evil,
without the power to avoid it.” Bible Com., 1:40—The tree of life
was symbol of the fact that “life is to be sought, not from
within, from himself, in his own powers or faculties; but from
that which is without him, even from him who hath life in
himself.”

As the water of baptism and the bread of the Lord’s supper, though
themselves common things, are symbolic of the greatest truths, so
the tree of knowledge and the tree of life were sacramental.
McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 99-141—“The two trees
represented good and evil. The prohibition of the latter was a
declaration that man of himself could not distinguish between good
and evil, and must trust divine guidance. Satan urged man to
discern between good and evil by his own wisdom, and so become
independent of God. Sin is the attempt of the creature to exercise
God’s attribute of discerning and choosing between good and evil
by his own wisdom. It is therefore self-conceit, self-trust,
self-assertion, the preference of his own wisdom and will to the
wisdom and will of God.” McIlvaine refers to Lord Bacon, Works,
1:82, 162. See also Pope, Theology, 2:10, 11; Boston Lectures for
1871:80, 81.

Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 142, on the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil—“When for the first time man stood face
to face with definite conscious temptation to do that which he
knew to be wrong, he held in his hand the fruit of that tree, and
his destiny as a moral being hung trembling in the balance. And
when for the first time he succumbed to temptation and faint
dawnings of remorse visited his heart, at that moment he was
banished from the Eden of innocence, in which his nature had
hitherto dwelt, and he was driven forth from the presence of the
Lord.” With the first sin, was started another and a downward
course of development. For the mythical or allegorical explanation
of the narrative, see also Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 164, 165, and
Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 218.

2. The course of the temptation, and the resulting fall.

The stages of the temptation appear to have been as follows:

(_a_) An appeal on the part of Satan to innocent appetites, together with
an implied suggestion that God was arbitrarily withholding the means of
their gratification (Gen. 3:1). The first sin was in Eve’s isolating
herself and choosing to seek her own pleasure without regard to God’s
will. This initial selfishness it was, which led her to listen to the
tempter instead of rebuking him or flying from him, and to exaggerate the
divine command in her response (Gen. 3:3).

_Gen. 3:1_—“_Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of
the garden?_” Satan emphasizes the _limitation_, but is silent
with regard to the generous _permission_—“_Of every tree of the
garden_ [but one] _thou mayest freely eat_” (_2:16_). C. H. M.,
_in loco_: “To admit the question ‘_hath God said?_’ is already
positive infidelity. To add to God’s word is as bad as to take
from it. ‘_Hath God said?_’ is quickly followed by ‘_Ye shall not
surely die._’ Questioning whether God has spoken, results in open
contradiction of what God has said. Eve suffered God’s word to be
contradicted by a creature, only because she had abjured its
authority over her conscience and heart.” The command was simply:
“_thou shalt not eat of it_” (_Gen. 2:17_). In her rising dislike
to the authority she had renounced, she exaggerates the command
into: “_Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it_” (_Gen.
3:3_). Here is already self-isolation, instead of love. Matheson,
Messages of the Old Religions, 318—“Ere ever the human soul
disobeyed, it had learned to distrust.... Before it violated the
existing law, it had come to think of the Lawgiver as one who was
jealous of his creatures.” Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “The first
question ever asked in human history was asked by the devil, and
the interrogation point still has in it the trail of the serpent.”

(_b_) A denial of the veracity of God, on the part of the tempter, with a
charge against the Almighty of jealousy and fraud in keeping his creatures
in a position of ignorance and dependence (Gen. 3:4, 5). This was
followed, on the part of the woman, by positive unbelief, and by a
conscious and presumptuous cherishing of desire for the forbidden fruit,
as a means of independence and knowledge. Thus unbelief, pride, and lust
all sprang from the self-isolating, self-seeking spirit, and fastened upon
the means of gratifying it (Gen. 3:6).

_Gen. 3:4, 5_—“_And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good
and evil_”; _3:6_—“_And when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he
did eat_”—so “taking the word of a Professor of Lying, that he
does not lie” (John Henry Newman). Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book
I—“To live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s
misery.” Godet on _John 1:4_—“In the words ‘_life_’ and ‘_light_’
it is natural to see an allusion to the tree of life and to that
of knowledge. After having eaten of the former, man would have
been called to feed on the second. John initiates us into the real
essence of these primordial and mysterious facts and gives us in
this verse, as it were, the philosophy of Paradise.” Obedience is
the way to knowledge, and the sin of Paradise was the seeking of
light without life; _cf._ _John 7:17_—“_If any man willeth to do
his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or
whether I speak from myself._”

(_c_) The tempter needed no longer to urge his suit. Having poisoned the
fountain, the stream would naturally be evil. Since the heart and its
desires had become corrupt, the inward disposition manifested itself in
act (Gen. 3:6—“did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her” = who
had been with her, and had shared her choice and longing). Thus man fell
inwardly, before the outward act of eating the forbidden fruit,—fell in
that one fundamental determination whereby he made supreme choice of self
instead of God. This sin of the inmost nature gave rise to sins of the
desires, and sins of the desires led to the outward act of transgression
(James 1:15).

_James 1:15_—“_Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth
sin._” Baird, Elohim Revealed, 888—“The law of God had already
been violated; man was fallen before the fruit had been plucked,
or the rebellion had been thus signalized. The law required not
only outward obedience but fealty of the heart, and this was
withdrawn before any outward token indicated the change.” Would he
part company with God, or with his wife? When the Indian asked the
missionary where his ancestors were, and was told that they were
in hell, he replied that he would go with his ancestors. He
preferred hell with his tribe to heaven with God. Sapphira, in
like manner, had opportunity given her to part company with her
husband, but she preferred him to God; _Acts 5:7-11_.

Philippi, Glaubenslehre: “So man became like God, a setter of law
to himself. Man’s self-elevation to godhood was his fall. God’s
self-humiliation to manhood was man’s restoration and
elevation.... _Gen. 3:22_—‘_The man has become as one of us_’ in
his condition of self-centered activity,—thereby losing all real
likeness to God, which consists in having the same aim with God
himself. _De te fabula narratur_; it is the condition, not of one
alone, but of all the race.” Sin once brought into being is
self-propagating; its seed is in itself: the centuries of misery
and crime that have followed have only shown what endless
possibilities of evil were wrapped up in that single sin. Keble:
“’Twas but a little drop of sin We saw this morning enter in, And
lo, at eventide a world is drowned!” Farrar, Fall of Man: “The
guilty wish of one woman has swollen into the irremediable
corruption of a world.” See Oehler, O.T. Theology, 1:231; Müller,
Doct. Sin, 2:381-385; Edwards, on Original Sin, part 4, chap. 2;
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:168-180.

II. Difficulties connected with the Fall considered as the personal Act of
Adam.

1. How could a holy being fall?

Here we must acknowledge that we cannot understand how the first unholy
emotion could have found lodgment in a mind that was set supremely upon
God, nor how temptation could have overcome a soul in which there were no
unholy propensities to which it could appeal. The mere power of choice
does not explain the fact of an unholy choice. The fact of natural desire
for sensuous and intellectual gratification does not explain how this
desire came to be inordinate. Nor does it throw light upon the matter, to
resolve this fall into a deception of our first parents by Satan. Their
yielding to such deception presupposes distrust of God and alienation from
him. Satan’s fall, moreover, since it must have been uncaused by
temptation from without, is more difficult to explain than Adam’s fall.

We may distinguish six incorrect explanations of the origin of
sin: 1. Emmons: Sin is due to God’s efficiency—God wrought the sin
in man’s heart. This is the “exercise system,” and is essentially
pantheistic. 2. Edwards: Sin is due to God’s providence—God caused
the sin indirectly by presenting motives. This explanation has all
the difficulties of determinism. 3. Augustine: Sin is the result
of God’s withdrawal from man’s soul. But inevitable sin is not
sin, and the blame of it rests on God who withdrew the grace
needed for obedience, 4. Pfleiderer: The fall results from man’s
already existing sinfulness. The fault then belongs, not to man,
but to God who made man sinful. 5. Hadley: Sin is due to man’s
moral insanity. But such concreated ethical defect would render
sin impossible. Insanity is the effect of sin, but not its cause.
6. Newman: Sin is due to man’s weakness. It is a negative, not a
positive, thing, an incident of finiteness. But conscience and
Scripture testify that it is positive as well as negative,
opposition to God as well as non-conformity to God.

Emmons was really a pantheist: “Since God,” he says, “works in all
men both to will and to do of his good pleasure, it is as easy to
account for the first offence of Adam as for any other sin....
There is no difficulty respecting the fall of Adam from his
original state of perfection and purity into a state of sin and
guilt, which is in any way peculiar.... It is as consistent with
the moral rectitude of the Deity to produce sinful as holy
exercises in the minds of men. He puts forth a positive influence
to make moral agents act, in every instance of their conduct, as
he pleases.... There is but one satisfactory answer to the
question _Whence came evil?_ and that is: It came from the great
first Cause of all things”; see Nathaniel Emmons, Works, 2:683.

Jonathan Edwards also denied power to the contrary even in Adam’s
first sin. God did not immediately cause that sin. But God was
active in the region of motives though his action was not seen.
Freedom of the Will, 161—“It was fitting that the transaction
should so take place that it might not appear to be from God as
the apparent fountain.” Yet “God may actually in his providence so
dispose and permit things that the event may be certainly and
infallibly connected with such disposal and permission”; see
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 304. Encyc. Britannica, 7:690—“According
to Edwards, Adam had two principles,—natural and supernatural.
When Adam sinned, the supernatural or divine principle was
withdrawn from him, and thus his nature became corrupt without God
infusing any evil thing into it. His posterity came into being
entirely under the government of natural and inferior principles.
But this solves the difficulty of making God the author of sin
only at the expense of denying to sin any real existence, and also
destroys Edwards’s essential distinction between natural and moral
ability.” Edwards on Trinity, Fisher’s edition, 44—“The sun does
not cause darkness and cold, when these follow infallibly upon the
withdrawal of his beams. God’s disposing the result is not a
positive exertion on his part.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:50—“God did
not withdraw the common supporting grace of his Spirit from Adam
until after transgression.” To us Adam’s act was irrational, but
not impossible; to a determinist like Edwards, who held that men
simply act out their characters, Adam’s act should have been not
only irrational, but impossible. Edwards nowhere shows how,
according to his principles, a holy being could possibly fall.

Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 123—“The account of the fall is the first
appearance of an already existing sinfulness, and a typical
example of the way in which every individual becomes sinful.
Original sin is simply the universality and originality of sin.
There is no such thing as indeterminism. The will can lift itself
from natural unfreedom, the unfreedom of the natural impulses, to
real spiritual freedom, only by distinguishing itself from the law
which sets before it its true end of being. The opposition of
nature to the law reveals an original nature power which precedes
all free self-determination. Sin is the evil bent of lawless
self-willed selfishness.” Pfleiderer appears to make this
sinfulness concreated, and guiltless, because proceeding from God.
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 288—“The wide discrepancy between
precept and practice gives rise to the theological conception of
_sin_, which, in low types of religion, is as often a violation of
some trivial prescription as it is of an ethical principle. The
presence of sin, contrasted with a state of innocence, occasions
the idea of a fall, or lapse from a sinless condition. This is not
incompatible with man’s derivation from an animal ancestry, which
prior to the rise of self-consciousness may be regarded as having
been in a state of moral _innocence_, the sense and reality of sin
being impossible to the animal.... The existence of sin, both as
an inherent disposition, and as a perverted form of action, may be
explained as a survival of animal propensity in human life.... Sin
is the disturbance of higher life by the intrusion of lower.”

Professor James Hadley: “Every man is more or less insane.” We
prefer to say: Every man, so far as he is apart from God, is
morally insane. But we must not make sin the result of insanity.
Insanity is the result of sin. Insanity, moreover, is a physical
disease,—sin is a perversion of the will. John Henry Newman, Idea
of a University, 60—“Evil has no substance of its own, but is only
the defect, excess, perversion or corruption of that which has
substance.” Augustine seems at times to favor this view. He
maintains that evil has no origin, inasmuch as it is negative, not
positive; that it is merely defect or failure. He illustrates it
by the damaged state of a discordant harp; see Moule, Outlines of
Theology, 171. So too A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 190, tells us
that Adam’s will was like a violin in tune, which through mere
inattention and neglect got out of tune at last. But here, too, we
must say with E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 124—“Sin explained
is sin defended.” All these explanations fail to explain, and
throw the blame of sin upon God, as directly or indirectly its
cause.

But sin is an existing fact. God cannot be its author, either by creating
man’s nature so that sin was a necessary incident of its development, or
by withdrawing a supernatural grace which was necessary to keep man holy.
Reason, therefore, has no other recourse than to accept the Scripture
doctrine that sin originated in man’s free act of revolt from God—the act
of a will which, though inclined toward God, was not yet confirmed in
virtue and was still capable of a contrary choice. The original possession
of such power to the contrary seems to be the necessary condition of
probation and moral development. Yet the exercise of this power in a
sinful direction can never be explained upon grounds of reason, since sin
is essentially unreason. It is an act of wicked arbitrariness, the only
motive of which is the desire to depart from God and to render self
supreme.

Sin is a “_mystery of lawlessness_” (_2 Thess. 2:7_), at the
beginning, as well as at the end. Neander, Planting and Training,
388—“Whoever explains sin nullifies it.” Man’s power at the
beginning to choose evil does not prove that, now that he has
fallen, he has equal power of himself permanently to choose good.
Because man has power to cast himself from the top of a precipice
to the bottom, it does not follow that he has equal power to
transport himself from the bottom to the top.

Man fell by wilful resistance to the inworking God. Christ is in
all men as he was in Adam, and all good impulses are due to him.
Since the Holy Spirit is the Christ within, all men are the
subjects of his striving. He does not withdraw from them except
upon, and in consequence of, their withdrawing from him. John
Milton makes the Almighty say of Adam’s sin: “Whose fault? Whose
but his own? Ingrate, he had of me All he could have; I made him
just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the Etherial Powers, And Spirits, both them who
stood and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell
who failed.” The word “cussedness” has become an apt word here.
The Standard Dictionary defines it as “1. Cursedness, meanness,
perverseness; 2. resolute courage, endurance: ‘Jim Bludsoe’s voice
was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness And knowed he
would keep his word.’ ” (John Hay, Jim Bludsoe, stanza 6). Not the
last, but the first, of these definitions best describes the first
sin. The most thorough and satisfactory treatment of the fall of
man in connection with the doctrine of evolution is found in
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 73-240.

Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 30—“There is a broad difference between
the commencement of holiness and the commencement of sin, and more
is necessary for the former than for the latter. An act of
obedience, if it is performed under the mere impulse of self-love,
is virtually no act of obedience. It is not performed with any
intention to obey, for that is holy, and cannot, according to the
theory, precede the act. But an act of disobedience, performed
from the desire of happiness, is rebellion. The cases are surely
different. If, to please myself, I do what God commands, it is not
holiness; but if, to please myself, I do what he forbids, it is
sin. Besides, no creature is immutable. Though created holy, the
taste for holy enjoyments may be overcome by a temptation
sufficiently insidious and powerful, and a selfish motive or
feeling excited in the mind. Neither is a sinful character
immutable. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth may be
clearly presented and so effectually applied as to produce that
change which is called regeneration; that is, to call into
existence a taste for holiness, so that it is chosen for its own
sake, and not as a means of happiness.”

H. B. Smith, System, 262—“The state of the case, as far as we can
enter into Adam’s experience, is this: Before the command, there
was the state of love without the thought of the opposite: a
knowledge of good only, a yet unconscious goodness: there was also
the knowledge that the eating of the fruit was against the divine
command. The temptation aroused pride; the yielding to that was
the sin. The change was there. The change was not in the choice as
an executive act, nor in the result of that act—the eating; but in
the choice of supreme love to the world and self, rather than
supreme devotion to God. It was an immanent preference of the
world,—not a love of the world following the choice, but a love of
the world which is the choice itself.”

263—“We cannot account for Adam’s fall, psychologically. In saying
this we mean: It is inexplicable by anything outside itself. We
must receive the fact as ultimate, and rest there. Of course we do
not mean that it was not in accordance with the laws of moral
agency—that it was a violation of those laws: but only that we do
not see the mode, that we cannot construct it for ourselves in a
rational way. It differs from all other similar cases of ultimate
preference _which we know_; _viz._, the sinner’s immanent
preference of the world, where we know there is an antecedent
ground in the bias to sin, and the Christian’s regeneration, or
immanent preference of God, where we know there is an influence
from without, the working of the Holy Spirit.” 264—“We must leave
the whole question with the immanent preference standing forth as
the ultimate fact in the case, which is not to be constructed
philosophically, as far as the processes of Adam’s soul are
concerned: we must regard that immanent preference as both a
choice and an affection, not an affection the result of a choice,
not a choice which is the consequence of an affection, but both
together.”

In one particular, however, we must differ with H. B. Smith: Since
the power of voluntary internal movement is the power of the will,
we must regard the change from good to evil as primarily a choice,
and only secondarily a state of affection caused thereby. Only by
postulating a free and conscious act of transgression on the part
of Adam, an act which bears to evil affection the relation not of
effect but of cause, do we reach, at the beginning of human
development, a proper basis for the responsibility and guilt of
Adam and the race. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:148-167.

2. How could God justly permit Satanic temptation?

We see in this permission not justice but benevolence.

(_a_) Since Satan fell without external temptation, it is probable that
man’s trial would have been substantially the same, even though there had
been no Satan to tempt him.

Angels had no animal nature to obscure the vision; they could not
be influenced through sense; yet they were tempted and they fell.
As Satan and Adam sinned under the best possible circumstances, we
may conclude that the human race would have sinned with equal
certainty. The only question at the time of their creation,
therefore, was how to modify the conditions so as best to pave the
way for repentance and pardon. These conditions are: 1. a material
body—which means confinement, limitation, need of self-restraint;
2. infancy—which means development, deliberation, with no memory
of the first sin; 3. the parental relation—repressing the
wilfulness of the child, and teaching submission to authority.

(_b_) In this case, however, man’s fall would perhaps have been without
what now constitutes its single mitigating circumstance. Self-originated
sin would have made man himself a Satan.

_Mat. 13:28_—“_An enemy hath done this._” “God permitted Satan to
divide the guilt with man, so that man might be saved from
despair.” See Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 16-29. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 103—“Why was not the tree made outwardly repulsive?
Because only the abuse of that which was positively good and
desirable could have attractiveness for Adam or could constitute a
real temptation.”

(_c_) As, in the conflict with temptation, it is an advantage to objectify
evil under the image of corruptible flesh, so it is an advantage to meet
it as embodied in a personal and seducing spirit.

Man’s body, corruptible and perishable as it is, furnishes him
with an illustration and reminder of the condition of soul to
which sin has reduced him. The flesh, with its burdens and pains,
is thus, under God, a help to the distinct recognition and
overcoming of sin. So it was an advantage to man to have
temptation confined to a single external voice. We may say of the
influence of the tempter, as Birks, in his Difficulties of Belief,
101, says of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
“Temptation did not depend upon the tree. Temptation was certain
in any event. The tree was a type into which God contracted the
possibilities of evil, so as to strip them of delusive vastness,
and connect them with definite and palpable warning,—to show man
that it was only one of the many possible activities of his spirit
which was forbidden, that God had right to all and could forbid
all.” The originality of sin was the most fascinating element in
it. It afforded boundless range for the imagination. Luther did
well to throw his inkstand at the devil. It was an advantage to
localize him. The concentration of the human powers upon a
definite offer of evil helps our understanding of the evil and
increases our disposition to resist it.

(_d_) Such temptation has in itself no tendency to lead the soul astray.
If the soul be holy, temptation may only confirm it in virtue. Only the
evil will, self-determined against God, can turn temptation into an
occasion of ruin.

As the sun’s heat has no tendency to wither the plant rooted in
deep and moist soil, but only causes it to send down its roots the
deeper and to fasten itself the more strongly, so temptation has
in itself no tendency to pervert the soul. It was only the seeds
that “_fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth_”
(_Mat. 13:5, 6_), that “_were scorched_” when “_the sun was
risen_”; and our Lord attributes their failure, not to the sun,
but to their lack of root and of soil: “_because they had no
root_,” “_because they had no deepness of earth._” The same
temptation which occasions the ruin of the false disciple
stimulates to sturdy growth the virtue of the true Christian.
Contrast with the temptation of Adam the temptation of Christ.
Adam had everything to plead for God, the garden and its delights,
while Christ had everything to plead against him, the wilderness
and its privations. But Adam had confidence in Satan, while Christ
had confidence in God; and the result was in the former case
defeat, in the latter victory. See Baird, Elohim Revealed,
385-396.

C. H. Spurgeon: “All the sea outside a ship can do it no damage
till the water enters and fills the hold. Hence, it is clear, our
greatest danger is within. All the devils in hell and tempters on
earth could do us no injury, if there were no corruption in our
own natures. The sparks will fly harmlessly, if there is no
tinder. Alas, our heart is our greatest enemy; this is the little
home-born thief. Lord, save me from that evil man, myself!”

Lyman Abbott: “The scorn of goody-goody is justified; for
goody-goody is innocence, not virtue; and the boy who never does
anything wrong because he never does anything at all is of no use
in the world.... Sin is not a help in development; it is a
hindrance. But temptation is a help; it is an indispensable
means.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 123—“Temptation in the
bad sense and a fall from innocence were no more necessary to the
perfection of the first man, than a marring of any one’s character
is now necessary to its completeness.” John Milton, Areopagitica:
“Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering
Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he
gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had
been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the
motions” (puppet shows). Robert Browning, Ring and the Book, 204
(Pope, 1183)—“Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time! Why comes
temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath
his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph? Pray ‘Lead us into no
such temptations. Lord’? Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the
bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant
dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have
praise!”

3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with disobedience to
so slight a command?

To this question we may reply:

(_a_) So slight a command presented the best test of the spirit of
obedience.

Cicero: “Parva res est, at magna culpa.” The child’s persistent
disobedience in one single respect to the mother’s command shows
that in all his other acts of seeming obedience he does nothing
for his mother’s sake, but all for his own,—shows, in other words,
that he does not possess the spirit of obedience in a single act.
S. S. Times: “Trifles are trifles only to triflers. Awake to the
significance of the insignificant! for you are in a world that
belongs not alone to the God of the Infinite, but also to the God
of the infinitesimal.”

(_b_) The external command was not arbitrary or insignificant in its
substance. It was a concrete presentation to the human will of God’s claim
to eminent domain or absolute ownership.

John Hall, Lectures on the Religious rise of Property, 10—“It
sometimes happens that owners of land, meaning to give the use of
it to others, without alienating it, impose a nominal rent—a
quit-rent, the passing of which acknowledges the recipient as
owner and the occupier as tenant. This is understood in all lands.
In many an old English deed, ‘three barley-corns,’ ‘a fat capon,’
or ‘a shilling,’ is the consideration which permanently recognizes
the rights of lordship. God taught men by the forbidden tree that
he was owner, that man was occupier. He selected the matter of
property to be the test of man’s obedience, the outward and
sensible sign of a right state of heart toward God; and when man
put forth his hand and did eat, he denied God’s ownership and
asserted his own. Nothing remained but to eject him.”

(_c_) The sanction attached to the command shows that man was not left
ignorant of its meaning or importance.

_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die._” _Cf._ _Gen. 3:3_—“_the tree which is in the midst of
the garden_”; and see Dodge, Christian Theology, 206, 207—“The
tree was central, as the commandment was central. The choice was
between the tree of life and the tree of death,—between self and
God. Taking the one was rejecting the other.”

(_d_) The act of disobedience was therefore the revelation of a will
thoroughly corrupted and alienated from God—a will given over to
ingratitude, unbelief, ambition, and rebellion.

The motive to disobedience was not appetite, but the ambition to
be as God. The outward act of eating the forbidden fruit was only
the thin edge of the wedge, behind which lay the whole mass—the
fundamental determination to isolate self and to seek personal
pleasure regardless of God and his law. So the man under
conviction for sin commonly clings to some single passion or plan,
only half-conscious of the fact that opposition to God in one
thing is opposition in all.

III. Consequences of the Fall, so far as respects Adam.

1. Death.

This death was twofold. It was partly:

A. Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the body.—The seeds
of death, naturally implanted in man’s constitution, began to develop
themselves the moment that access to the tree of life was denied him. Man
from that moment was a dying creature.

In a true sense death began at once. To it belonged the pains
which both man and woman should suffer in their appointed
callings. The fact that man’s earthly existence did not at once
end, was due to God’s counsel of redemption. “_The law of the
Spirit of life_” (_Rom. 8:2_) began to work even then, and grace
began to counteract the effects of the Fall. Christ has now
“_abolished death_” (_2 Tim. 1:10_) by taking its terrors away,
and by turning it into the portal of heaven. He will destroy it
utterly (_1 Cor. 15:26_) when by resurrection from the dead, the
bodies of the saints shall be made immortal. Dr. William A.
Hammond, following a French scientist, declares that there is no
reason in a normal physical system why man should not live
forever.

That death is not a physical necessity is evident if we once
remember that life is, not fuel, but fire. Weismann, Heredity, 8,
24, 72, 159—“The organism must not be looked upon as a heap of
combustible material, which is completely reduced to ashes in a
certain time, the length of which is determined by its size and by
the rate at which it burns; but it should be compared to a fire,
to which fresh fuel can be continually added, and which, whether
it burns quickly or slowly, can be kept burning as long as
necessity demands.... Death is not a primary necessity, but it has
been acquired secondarily, as an adaptation.... Unicellular
organisms, increasing by means of fission, in a certain sense
possess immortality. No Amœba has ever lost an ancestor by
death.... Each individual now living is far older than mankind,
and is almost as old as life itself.... Death is not an essential
attribute of living matter.”

If we regard man as primarily spirit, the possibility of life
without death is plain. God lives on eternally, and the future
physical organism of the righteous will have in it no seed of
death. Man might have been created without being mortal. That he
is mortal is due to anticipated sin. Regard body as simply the
constant energizing of God, and we see that there is no inherent
necessity of death. Denney, Studies in Theology, 98—“Man, it is
said, must die because he is a natural being, and what belongs to
nature belongs to him. But we assert, on the contrary, that he was
created a supernatural being, with a primacy over nature, so
related to God as to be immortal. Death is an intrusion, and it is
finally to be abolished.” Chandler, The Spirit of Man, 45-47—“The
first stage in the fall was the disintegration of spirit into body
and mind; and the second was the enslavement of mind to body.”

Some recent writers, however, deny that death is a consequence of
the Fall, except in the sense that man’s fear of death results
from his sin. Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, 19-22,
indeed, asserts the value and propriety of death as an element of
the normal universe. He would oppose to the doctrine of Weismann
the conclusions of Maupas, the French biologist, who has followed
infusoria through 600 generations. Fission, says Maupas,
reproduces for many generations, but the unicellular germ
ultimately weakens and dies out. The asexual reproduction must be
supplemented by a higher conjugation, the meeting and partial
blending of the contents of two cells. This is only occasional,
but it is necessary to the permanence of the species. Isolation is
ultimate death. Newman Smyth adds that death and sex appear
together. When sex enters to enrich and diversify life, all that
will not take advantage of it dies out. Survival of the fittest is
accompanied by death of that which will not improve. Death is a
secondary thing—a consequence of life. A living form acquired the
power of giving up its life for another. It died in order that its
offspring might survive in a higher form. Death helps life on and
up. It does not put a stop to life. It became an advantage to life
as a whole that certain primitive forms should be left by the way
to perish. We owe our human birth to death in nature. The earth
before us has died that we might live. We are the living children
of a world that has died for us. Death is a means of life, of
increasing specialization of function. Some cells are born to give
up their life sacrificially for the organism to which they belong.

While we regard Newman Smyth’s view as an ingenious and valuable
explanation of the incidental results of death, we do not regard
it as an explanation of death’s origin. God has overruled death
for good, and we can assent to much of Dr. Smyth’s exposition. But
that this good could be gained only by death seems to us wholly
unproved and unprovable. Biology shows us that other methods of
reproduction are possible, and that death is an incident and not a
primary requisite to development. We regard Dr. Smyth’s theory as
incompatible with the Scripture representations of death as the
consequence of sin, as the sign of God’s displeasure, as a means
of discipline for the fallen, as destined to complete abolition
when sin itself has been done away. We reserve, however, the full
proof that physical death is part of the penalty of sin until we
discuss the Consequences of Sin to Adam’s Posterity.

But this death was also, and chiefly,

B. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God.—In this are
included: (_a_) Negatively, the loss of man’s moral likeness to God, or
that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted
his original righteousness. (_b_) Positively, the depraving of all those
powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious
truth, we call man’s moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the
blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the
enslavement of his will.

Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he
ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure,—he
was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things also in God’s
light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things
as they affected self. This self-consciousness—how unlike the
objective life of the first apostles, of Christ and of every
loving soul! Once man’s affections were pure,—he loved God
supremely, and other things in subordination to God’s will. Now he
loved self supremely, and was ruled by inordinate affections
toward the creatures which could minister to his selfish
gratification. Now man could do nothing pleasing to God, because
he lacked the love which is necessary to all true obedience.

G. F. Wilkin, Control in Evolution, shows that the will may
initiate a counter-evolution which shall reverse the normal course
of man’s development. First comes an act, then a habit, of
surrender to animalism; then subversion of faith in the true and
the good; then active championship of evil; then transmission of
evil disposition and tendencies to posterity. This subversion of
the rational will by an evil choice took place very early, indeed
in the first man. All human history has been a conflict between
these two antagonistic evolutions, the upward and the downward.
Biological rather than moral phenomena predominate. No human being
escapes transgressing the law of his evolutionary nature. There is
a moral deadness and torpor resulting. The rational will must be
restored before man can go right again. Man must commit himself to
a true life; then to the restoration of other men to that same
life; then there must be coöperation of society; this work must
extend to the limits of the human species. But this will be
practicable and rational only as it is shown that the unfolding
plan of the universe has destined the righteous to a future
incomparably more desirable than that of the wicked; in other
words, immortality is necessary to evolution.

“If immortality be necessary to evolution, then immortality
becomes scientific. Jesus has the authority and omnipresence of
the power behind evolution. He imposes upon his followers the same
normal evolutionary mission that sent him into the world. He
organizes them into churches. He teaches a moral evolution of
society through the united voluntary efforts of his followers.
They are ‘_the good seed ... the sons of the kingdom_’ (_Mat.
13:38_). Theism makes a definite attempt to counteract the evil of
the counter-evolution, and the attempt justifies itself by its
results. Christianity is scientific (1) in that it satisfies the
conditions of _knowledge_: the persisting and comprehensive
harmony of phenomena, and the interpretation of all the facts; (2)
in its _aim_, the moral regeneration of the world; (3) in its
_methods_, adapting itself to man as an ethical being, capable of
endless progress; (4) in its conception of normal _society_, as of
sinners uniting together to help one another to depend on God and
conquer self, so recognizing the ethical bond as the most
essential. This doctrine harmonizes science and religion,
revealing the new species of control which marks the highest stage
of evolution; shows that the religion of the N. T. is essentially
scientific and its truths capable of practical verification; that
Christianity is not any particular church, but the teachings of
the Bible; that Christianity is the true system of ethics, and
should be taught in public institutions; that cosmic evolution
comes at last to depend on the wisdom and will of man, the
immanent God working in finite and redeemed humanity.”

In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self
instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate
things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God
as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of
his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally
obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral
and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections;
and—as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason—conscience, which,
as the normal judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law
given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this
inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing
ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable.

See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:61-73; Shedd, Sermons to the
Natural Man, 202-230, esp. 205—“Whatsoever springs from will we
are responsible for. Man’s inability to love God supremely results
from his intense self-will and self-love, and therefore his
impotence is a part and element of his sin, and not an excuse for
it.” And yet the question “_Adam, where art thou?_” (_Gen. 3:9_),
says C. J. Baldwin, “was, (1) a question, not as to Adam’s
physical locality, but as to his moral condition; (2) a question,
not of justice threatening, but of love inviting to repentance and
return; (3) a question, not to Adam as an individual only, but to
the whole humanity of which he was the representative.”

Dale, Ephesians, 40—“Christ is the eternal Son of God; and it was
the first, the primeval purpose of the divine grace that his life
and sonship should be shared by all mankind; that through Christ
all men should rise to a loftier rank than that which belonged to
them by their creation; should be ‘_partakers of the divine
nature_’ (_2 Pet. 1:4_), and share the divine righteousness and
joy. Or rather, the race was actually created in Christ; and it
was created that the whole race might in Christ inherit the life
and glory of God. The divine purpose has been thwarted and
obstructed and partially defeated by human sin. But it is being
fulfilled in all who are ‘_in Christ_’ (_Eph. 1:3_).”

2. Positive and formal exclusion from God’s presence.

This included:

(_a_) The cessation of man’s former familiar intercourse with God, and the
setting up of outward barriers between man and his Maker (cherubim and
sacrifice).

“In die Welt hinausgestossen, Steht der Mensch verlassen da.”
Though God punished Adam and Eve, he did not curse them as he did
the serpent. Their exclusion from the tree of life was a matter of
benevolence as well as of justice, for it prevented the
immortality of sin.

(_b_) Banishment from the garden, where God had specially manifested his
presence.—Eden was perhaps a spot reserved, as Adam’s body had been, to
show what a _sinless_ world would be. This positive exclusion from God’s
presence, with the sorrow and pain which it involved, may have been
intended to illustrate to man the nature of that eternal death from which
he now needed to seek deliverance.

At the gates of Eden, there seems to have been a manifestation of
God’s presence, in the cherubim, which constituted the place a
sanctuary. Both Cain and Abel brought offerings “_unto the Lord_”
(_Gen. 4:3, 4_), and when Cain fled, he is said to have gone out
“_from the presence of the Lord_” (_Gen. 4:16_). On the
consequences of the Fall to Adam, see Edwards, Works, 2:390-405;
Hopkins, Works, 1:206-246; Dwight, Theology, 1:393-434; Watson,
Institutes, 2:19-42; Martensen, Dogmatics, 155-173; Van Oosterzee,
Dogmatics, 402-412.

Section V.—Imputation Of Adam’s Sin To His Posterity.

We have seen that all mankind are sinners; that all men are by nature
depraved, guilty, and condemnable; and that the transgression of our first
parents, so far as respects the human race, was the first sin. We have
still to consider the connection between Adam’s sin and the depravity,
guilt, and condemnation of the race.

(_a_) The Scriptures teach that the transgression of our first parents
constituted their posterity sinners (Rom. 5:19—“through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners”), so that Adam’s sin is imputed,
reckoned, or charged to every member of the race of which he was the germ
and head (Rom. 5:16—“the judgment came of one [offence] unto
condemnation”). It is because of Adam’s sin that we are born depraved and
subject to God’s penal inflictions (Rom. 5:12—“through one man sin entered
into the world, and death through sin”; Eph. 2:3—“by nature children of
wrath”). Two questions demand answer,—first, how we can be responsible for
a depraved nature which we did not personally and consciously originate;
and, secondly, how God can justly charge to our account the sin of the
first father of the race. These questions are substantially the same, and
the Scriptures intimate the true answer to the problem when they declare
that “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22) and “that death passed unto all men,
for that all sinned” when “through one man sin entered into the world”
(Rom. 5:12). In other words, Adam’s sin is the cause and ground of the
depravity, guilt, and condemnation of all his posterity, simply because
Adam and his posterity are one, and, by virtue of their organic unity, the
sin of Adam is the sin of the race.

Amiel says that “the best measure of the profundity of any
religious doctrine is given by its conception of sin and of the
cure of sin.” We have seen that sin is a state; a state of the
will; a selfish state of the will; a selfish state of the will
inborn and universal; a selfish state of the will inborn and
universal by reason of man’s free act. Connecting the present
discussion with the preceding doctrines of theology, the steps of
our treatment thus far are as follows: 1. God’s holiness is purity
of nature. 2. God’s law demands purity of nature. 3. Sin is impure
nature. 4. All men have this impure nature. 5. Adam originated
this impure nature. In the present section we expect to add: 6.
Adam and we are one; and, in the succeeding section, to complete
the doctrine with: 7. The guilt and penalty of Adam’s sin are
ours.

(_b_) According as we regard this twofold problem from the point of view
of the abnormal human condition, or of the divine treatment of it, we may
call it the problem of original sin, or the problem of imputation. Neither
of these terms is objectionable when its meaning is defined. By imputation
of sin we mean, not the arbitrary and mechanical charging to a man of that
for which he is not naturally responsible, but the reckoning to a man of a
guilt which is properly his own, whether by virtue of his individual acts,
or by virtue of his connection with the race. By original sin we mean that
participation in the common sin of the race with which God charges us, in
virtue of our descent from Adam, its first father and head.

We should not permit our use of the term “imputation” to be
hindered or prejudiced by the fact that certain schools of
theology, notably the Federal school, have attached to it an
arbitrary, external, and mechanical meaning—holding that God
imputes sin to men, not because they are sinners, but upon the
ground of a legal fiction whereby Adam, without their consent, was
made their representative. We shall see, on the contrary, that (1)
in the case of Adam’s sin imputed to us, (2) in the case of our
sins imputed to Christ, and (3) in the case of Christ’s
righteousness imputed to the believer, there is always a realistic
basis for the imputation, namely, a real union, (1) between Adam
and his descendants, (2) between Christ and the race, and (3)
between believers and Christ, such as gives in each case community
of life, and enables us to say that God imputes to no man what
does not properly belong to him.

Dr. E. G. Robinson used to say that “imputed righteousness and
imputed sin are as absurd as any notion that ever took possession
of human nature.” He had in mind, however, only that constructive
guilt and merit which was advocated by Princeton theologians. He
did not mean to deny the imputation to men of that which is their
own. He recognized the fact that all men are sinners by
inheritance as well as by voluntary act, and he found this taught
in Scripture, both in the O. T. and in the N. T.; _e. g._, _Neh.
1:6_—“_I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have
sinned against thee. Yea, I and my father’s house have sinned_”;
_Jer. 3:25_—“_Let us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion
cover us; for we have sinned against Jehovah our God, we and our
fathers_”; _14:20_—“_We acknowledge, O Jehovah, our wickedness,
and the iniquity of our fathers; for we have sinned against
thee._” The word “_imputed_” is itself found in the N. T.; _e.
g._, _2 Tim. 4:16_—“_At my first defence no one took my part: may
it not be laid to their account,_” or “_imputed to them_”—μὴ
αὐτοῖς λογισθείη. _Rom. 5:13_—“_sin is not imputed when there is
no law_”—οὐκ ἐλλογᾶται.

Not only the saints of Scripture times, but modern saints also,
have imputed to themselves the sins of others, of their people, of
their times, of the whole world. Jonathan Edwards, Resolutions,
quoted by Allen, 28—“I will take it for granted that no one is so
evil as myself; I will identify myself with all men and act as if
their evil were my own, as if I had committed the same sins and
had the same infirmities, so that the knowledge of their failings
will promote in me nothing but a sense of shame.” Frederick
Denison Maurice: “I wish to confess the sins of the time as my
own.” Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 87—“The phrase
‘solidarity of humanity’ is growing every day in depth and
significance. Whatever we do, we do not for ourselves alone. It is
not as an individual alone that I can be measured or judged.”
Royce, World and Individual, 2:404—“The problem of evil indeed
demands the presence of free will in the world; while, on the
other hand, it is equally true that no moral world whatever can be
made consistent with the realistic thesis according to which free
will agents are, in fortune and in penalty, independent of the
deeds of other moral agents. It follows that, in our moral world,
the righteous can suffer without individually deserving their
suffering, just because their lives have no independent being, but
are linked with all life—God himself also sharing in their
suffering.”

The above quotations illustrate the belief in a human
responsibility that goes beyond the bounds of personal sins. What
this responsibility is, and what its limits are, we have yet to
define. The problem is stated, but not solved, by A. H. Bradford,
Heredity, 198, and The Age of Faith, 235—“Stephen prays: ‘_Lord,
lay not this sin to their charge_’ (_Acts 7:60_). To whose charge
then? We all have a share in one another’s sins. We too stood by
and consented, as Paul did. ‘My sins gave sharpness to the nails,
And pointed every thorn’ that pierced the brow of Jesus.... Yet in
England and Wales the severer forms of this teaching [with regard
to sin] have almost disappeared; not because of more thorough
study of the Scripture, but because the awful congestion of
population, with its attendant miseries, has convinced the
majority of Christian thinkers that the old interpretations were
too small for the near and terrible facts of human life, such as
women with babies in their arms at the London gin-shops giving the
infants sips of liquor out of their glasses, and a tavern keeper
setting his four or five year old boy upon the counter to drink
and swear and fight in imitation of his elders.”

(_c_) There are two fundamental principles which the Scriptures already
cited seem clearly to substantiate, and which other Scriptures
corroborate. The first is that man’s relations to moral law extend beyond
the sphere of conscious and actual transgression, and embrace those moral
tendencies and qualities of his being which he has in common with every
other member of the race. The second is, that God’s moral government is a
government which not only takes account of persons and personal acts, but
also recognizes race responsibilities and inflicts race-penalties; or, in
other words, judges mankind, not simply as a collection of separate
individuals, but also as an organic whole, which can collectively revolt
from God and incur the curse of the violated law.

On race-responsibility, see H. R. Smith, System of Theology,
288-302—“No one can apprehend the doctrine of original sin, nor
the doctrine of redemption, who insists that the whole moral
government of God has respect only to individual desert, who does
not allow that the moral government of God, _as_ moral, has a
wider scope and larger relations, so that God may dispense
suffering and happiness (in his all-wise and inscrutable
providence) on other grounds than that of personal merit and
demerit. The dilemma here is: the facts connected with native
depravity and with the redemption through Christ either belong to
the moral government of God, or not. If they do, then that
government has to do with other considerations than those of
personal merit and demerit (since our disabilities in consequence
of sin and the grace offered in Christ are not in any sense the
result of our personal choice, though we do choose in our
relations to both). If they do not belong to the moral government
of God, where shall we assign them? To the physical? That
certainly can not be. To the divine sovereignty? But that does not
relieve any difficulty; for the question still remains, Is that
sovereignty, as thus exercised, just or unjust? We must take one
or the other of these. The whole (of sin and grace) is either a
mystery of sovereignty—of mere omnipotence—or a proceeding of
moral government. The question will arise with respect to grace as
well as to sin: How can the theory that all moral government has
respect only to the merit or demerit of personal acts be applied
to our justification? If all sin is in sinning, with a personal
desert of everlasting death, by parity of reasoning all holiness
must consist in a holy choice with personal merit of eternal life.
We say then, generally, that all definitions of sin which mean _a_
sin are irrelevant here.” Dr. Smith quotes Edwards,
2:309—“Original sin, the innate sinful depravity of the heart,
includes not only the depravity of nature but the imputation of
Adam’s first sin, or, in other words, the liableness or
exposedness of Adam’s posterity, in the divine judgment, to
partake of the punishment of that sin.”

The watchword of a large class of theologians—popularly called
“New School”—is that “all sin consists in sinning,”—that is, all
sin is sin of act. But we have seen that the dispositions and
states in which a man is unlike God and his purity are also sin
according to the meaning of the law. We have now to add that each
man is responsible also for that sin of our first father in which
the human race apostatized from God. In other words, we recognize
the guilt of race-sin as well as of personal sin. We desire to say
at the outset, however, that our view, and, as we believe, the
Scriptural view, requires us also to hold to certain
qualifications of the doctrine which to some extent alleviate its
harshness and furnish its proper explanation. These qualifications
we now proceed to mention.

(_d_) In recognizing the guilt of race-sin, we are to bear in mind: (1)
that actual sin, in which the personal agent reaffirms the underlying
determination of his will, is more guilty than original sin alone; (2)
that no human being is finally condemned solely on account of original
sin; but that all who, like infants, do not commit personal
transgressions, are saved through the application of Christ’s atonement;
(3) that our responsibility for inborn evil dispositions, or for the
depravity common to the race, can be maintained only upon the ground that
this depravity was caused by an original and conscious act of free will,
when the race revolted from God in Adam; (4) that the doctrine of original
sin is only the ethical interpretation of biological facts—the facts of
heredity and of universal congenital ills, which demand an ethical ground
and explanation; and (5) that the idea of original sin has for its
correlate the idea of original grace, or the abiding presence and
operation of Christ, the immanent God, in every member of the race, in
spite of his sin, to counteract the evil and to prepare the way, so far as
man will permit, for individual and collective salvation.

Over against the maxim: “All sin consists in sinning,” we put the
more correct statement: Personal sin consists in sinning, but in
Adam’s first sinning the race also sinned, so that “_in Adam all
die_” (_1 Cor. 15:22_). Denney, Studies in Theology, 86—“Sin is
not only personal but social; not only social but organic;
character and all that is involved in character are capable of
being attributed not only to individuals but to societies, and
eventually to the human race itself; in short, there are not only
isolated sins and individual sinners, but what has been called a
kingdom of sin upon earth.” Leslie Stephen: “Man not dependent on
a race is as meaningless a phrase as an apple that does not grow
on a tree.” “Yet Aaron Burr and Abraham Lincoln show how a man may
throw away every advantage of the best heredity and environment,
while another can triumph over the worst. Man does not take his
character from external causes, but shapes it by his own willing
submission to influences from beneath or from above.”

Wm. Adams Brown: “The idea of inherited guilt can be accepted only
if paralleled by the idea of inherited good. The consequences of
sin have often been regarded as social, while the consequences of
good have been regarded as only individual. But heredity transmits
both good and evil.” Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley Ward: “Why bowest
thou, O soul of mine, Crushed by ancestral sin? Thou hast a noble
heritage, That bids thee victory win. The tainted past may bring
forth flowers, As blossomed Aaron’s rod: No legacy of sin annuls
Heredity from God.” For further statements with regard to
race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:29-39 (System
Doctrine, 2:324-333). For the modern view of the Fall, and its
reconciliation with the doctrine of evolution, see J. H. Bernard,
art.: The Fall, in Hastings’ Dict. of Bible; A. H. Strong, Christ
in Creation, 163-180; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.

(_e_) There is a race-sin, therefore, as well as a personal sin; and that
race-sin was committed by the first father of the race, when he comprised
the whole race in himself. All mankind since that time have been born in
the state into which he fell—a state of depravity, guilt, and
condemnation. To vindicate God’s justice in imputing to us the sin of our
first father, many theories have been devised, a part of which must be
regarded as only attempts to evade the problem by denying the facts set
before us in the Scriptures. Among these attempted explanations of the
Scripture statements, we proceed to examine the six theories which seem
most worthy of attention.

The first three of the theories which we discuss may be said to be
evasions of the problem of original sin; all, in one form or
another, deny that God imputes to all men Adam’s sin, in such a
sense that all are guilty for it. These theories are the Pelagian,
the Arminian, and the New School. The last three of the theories
which we are about to treat, namely, the Federal theory, the
theory of Mediate Imputation, and the theory of Adam’s Natural
Headship, are all Old School theories, and have for their common
characteristic that they assert the guilt of inborn depravity. All
three, moreover, hold that we are in some way responsible for
Adam’s sin, though they differ as to the precise way in which we
are related to Adam. We must grant that no one, even of these
latter theories, is wholly satisfactory. We hope, however, to show
that the last of them—the Augustinian theory, the theory of Adam’s
natural headship, the theory that Adam and his descendants are
naturally and organically one—explains the largest number of
facts, is least open to objection, and is most accordant with
Scripture.

I. Theories of Imputation.

1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man’s natural Innocence.

Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were
condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as
opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with
regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative,
although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship.
Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general
scheme.

According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God,
and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as
perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect
of Adam’s sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in
no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that
habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent
transgression of known law.

Adam’s sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only
to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each
of Adam’s descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and
consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the
gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been
saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original
law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom.
5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “all
incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam’s example.”

Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points
of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal,
so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam’s
sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born
infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the
whole human race neither dies on account of Adam’s sin, nor rises
on account of Christ’s resurrection; (5) infants, even though not
baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of
salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who
did not commit sin.

In Pelagius’ Com. on _Rom. 5:12_, published in Jerome’s Works,
vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch,
Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa.
The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies
were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on
the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil
thoughts and inclinations were not sin. “Non pleni nascimur”: we
are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius
thought, could not be concreated. Adam’s descendants are not
weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many
commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man
there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms
right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses
himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as
indications of a certain holiness in all men, and
misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he
ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence
opposing man’s bent to evil and leading him to repentance. Grace,
on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace of _creation_—God’s
originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will.
While Augustinianism regards human nature as _dead_, and
Semi-Pelagianism regards it as _sick_, Pelagianism proper declares
it to be _well_.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the
body, man’s surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have
any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only
through external means, such as Christ’s doctrine, example, and
promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes
from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man’s
nature. God cannot enter man’s being if he would, and he would not
if he could. Free will is everything.” _Ib._, 1:626 (Syst. Doct.,
2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor
that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too
great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In
this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God
as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living
relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true
conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers
by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in
seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that
its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really
degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.” See
_Ib._, 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct.,
2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church
History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton
Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially
Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half
Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.

Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:

A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated
in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only
sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church
at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its
truth.

As slavery was “the sum of all villainy,” so the Pelagian doctrine
may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a
survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.
“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for
external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his
virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first
roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of
the church quote Augustine’s prayer: ‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod
vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’ From
this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero,
so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan
teaching.” The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to
refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the
Holy Spirit. _Eph. 2:10_—“_For we are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we
should walk in them_”; _John 15:16_—“_Ye did not choose me, but I
chose you_”; _1:13_—“_who were born, not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God._” H. Auber: “And
every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought
of holiness, Are his alone.”

Augustine had said that “Man is most free when controlled by God
alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus” (De Mor. Eccl., xxi).
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in
him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all
its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.” Pelagianism, on the
contrary, is man’s declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist.
Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole
mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian: ‘Homo libero
arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole
being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but
with himself alone. God reënters man’s life only at the end, at
the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”

B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (_a_) that evil disposition and
state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (_b_) that such evil disposition and
state are inborn in all mankind; (_c_) that men universally are guilty of
overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (_d_)
that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (_e_) that all
men, without exception, are dependent for salvation upon God’s atoning,
regenerating, sanctifying grace; (_f_) that man’s present state of
corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam’s
transgression.

The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that “we are
utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and
wholly inclined to all evil.” To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is
a mere incident. He knows only of _sins_, not of _sin_. He holds
the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as
consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it
does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does
not account for _character_ at all. There is no such thing as a
state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon
these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of
transgression. _John 3:6_—“_That which is born of the flesh is
flesh_”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself,
from the very beginning, sinful and guilty” (Dorner). Witness the
tendency to degradation in families and nations.

Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its
superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back:
Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima
naturaliter Christiana.” The tendency has come down to modern
times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when
children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they
lose their artless loveliness.” A Rochester Unitarian preacher
publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the
natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God.
Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of “the shadow which the Manichæan
theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children,
in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper’s
brood.” Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest
opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt
may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences
tending to salvation.

Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that “all children are within the
household of God”; that “they are already members of his kingdom”;
that “the adolescent change” is “a step not _into_ the Christian
life, but _within_ the Christian life.” We are taught that
salvation is by education. But education is only a way of
presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should
accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in
every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance
of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit,
will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine
was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while
Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius
might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached,
like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden
side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The
quality of the metal which I saw.”

Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The
controversy “resolves itself into the question whether redemption
and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in
its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work
itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to
holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the
opposite way, deriving from God’s unconditioned and all-working
grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led
from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises
from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of
God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward
help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the
inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first
involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not
high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion
a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original
nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old
passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form
in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high
opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is
transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural
reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without
revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic
morality is Pelagian.” See this Compendium, page 89.

Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of
religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to
impute to one’s opponent positions which he does not hold, or to
draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be
held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does
not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is
bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from
his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these
directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he
disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius
the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in
order to make Pelagius’s teaching consistent and complete; and
Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian
theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a
discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make
prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to
damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more
rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the
divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word
reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their
opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve,
pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their
attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration.
And the same remark would apply to almost every theological
contention that has embittered the church’s experience.”

C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (_a_)
that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is
also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end;
(_b_) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of
will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has
this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a
single volition reverse its moral state; (_c_) that ability is the measure
of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner’s
responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (_d_) that law
consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect
harmony with God, inwrought into man’s moral nature; (_e_) that each human
soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral
law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are
organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate
relation to God’s law, by virtue of their derivation from one common
stock.

(_a_) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental
principles of Pelagianism to be “the ability to choose, equally and at any
moment, between good and evil.” There is no recognition of the law by
which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess
to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is
an everlasting ‘tick,’ ‘tick,’ and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving
forward of the hands of the clock follows.” “There is no continuity of
moral life—no _character_, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(_b_) See art.
on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism
holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:
“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.” Harris,
Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to
freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action
is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if
acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.” “By mere volition the soul
now a _plenum_ can become a _vacuum_, or now a _vacuum_ can become a
_plenum_.” On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of
Sin, 37-44.

(_c_) _Ps. 79:8_—“_Remember not against us the iniquities of our
forefathers_”; _106:6_—“_We have sinned with our fathers._” Notice
the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental
mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin,
2:316, 317—“Neither the _atomistic_ nor the _organic_ view of
human nature is the complete truth.” Each must be complemented by
the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine,
2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the
moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting
of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of
the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole
land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder,
the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan’s crime is charged to
the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage,
and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people
become a legal personality.

“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers
unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers
requires a new heart. They who are not held accountable for the
sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their
responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to
their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says: ‘_Am I my
brother’s keeper?_’ (_Gen. 4:9_), and thinks to construct a
constant equation between individual misfortune and _individual_
sin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception
of the relation of the individual to the community. Such
sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the
good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary,
when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the
guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or
race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6,
Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal
sin and race-sin.

“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the
hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new
race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to,
and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to
isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the
recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in
the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner
solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the
present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not
Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression: ‘_That
which is born of the flesh is flesh_’ (_John 3:6_). Personality is
the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in
the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow.
These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something
great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it
perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from
communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual
sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for
permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying
the race,—that is, to complain of one’s own existence.” See Shedd,
Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287,
296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97;
Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.

2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.

Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South
Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the
race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different
interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward
Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist
body is the modern representative of this view.

According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of
Adam’s transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness,
and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated
from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine
help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability,
however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of
justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn
of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is
sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make
obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has
power to do.

The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in
themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted
guilty of Adam’s sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to
evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies
these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God
has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for
that all sinned,” signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted
upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by
divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all
personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.

See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531,
575-583. The description given above is a description of
Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so
guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to
construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian.
But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only
inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God’s
condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us
justly chargeable with Adam’s sin, except in the sense that we are
obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown
in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was
more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch,
Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born
“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately
created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that
sin would be from God.” Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby
and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.

John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian
doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits
entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any
power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the
guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all
through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit,
through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The
order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send
the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world;
(3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such
grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who
improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be
saved.” We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved
nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace,
while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it
not being accountable.

Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes,
2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam’s sin in
any proper sense, yet declares that “Limborch and others
materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward
lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented
by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these
tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a
universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it
inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin,
yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not
indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin
is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view
of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born
under ‘the free gift,’ the effects of the ‘righteousness’ of one,
which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on
them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the
condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with
repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy
Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence
may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt
tendency of their nature.”

It will be observed that Watson’s Wesleyanism is much more near to
Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as
Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and
Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences
between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America,
better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was
under _obligation_ to restore man’s ability, and yet they
inconsistently speak of this ability as a _gracious_ ability. Two
passages from Raymond’s Theology show the inconsistency of calling
that “grace,” which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to
make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under
grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through
Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would
have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary
to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are
secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a
bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his
fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying,
and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate
the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he
in a condition of total depravity.”

Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which
this “grace” is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the
posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created
beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and God to
him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is.
Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a
Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided
Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to
propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The
gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a
compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”
McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse
Whedon’s art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of
Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.

With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:

A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the
Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the
manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man’s nature.
But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (_a_) that this gift
of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived
from Adam’s fall; (_b_) that without this gift man would not be
responsible for being morally imperfect; and (_c_) that at the beginning
of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.

John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text: _John
1:9_—“_the light which lighteth every man_”—which refers to the
natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate
Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his
coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit,
because it was “_the Spirit of Christ_” (_1 Pet. 1:11_). The
Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of
an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the
effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But
Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and
it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working.
Universal grace does not remove man’s depravity or man’s
condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation of _Rom.
5:12-19_ and of _Eph. 2:3_; it only puts side by side with that
depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which
counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance: _John
1:5_—“_the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness
apprehended it not._” John Wesley also referred to _Rom.
5:18_—“_through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto
all men to justification of life_”—but here the “all men” is
conterminous with “the many” who are “_made righteous_” in _verse
19_, and with the “_all_” who are “_made alive_” in _1 Cor.
15:22_; in other words, the “_all_” in this case is “all
believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the
Spirit, but universal salvation.

Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and
evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however,
by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace
and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as
well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are
more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian
Doctrine, 321, tells us that “guilt cannot possibly be a matter of
inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the
posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption,
which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by
the will of the individual.” How little the Arminian means by
“sin,” can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that
“Christ inherited sin.” He meant of course only physical and
intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt. “A child
inherits its parent’s nature,” it is said, “not as a punishment,
but by natural law.” But we reply that this natural law is itself
an expression of God’s moral nature, and the inheritance of evil
can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity
to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of
each member in the common guilt of the race.

In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the
element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos.
Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is
considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far
when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet
the actually present good, the ‘original grace,’ is
overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin
is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the
individual always participates in this collective guilt in the
measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the
collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”
Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the
legal consequences of Adam’s sin to his posterity; but what it
gives with one hand, it takes back with the other, attributing to
grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If
the effects of Adam’s Fall on his posterity are such that they
would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that
was to follow it, then God’s act in providing a Redeemer was not
an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such
thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry
of the Spirit, 187 _sq._, denies the universal gift of the Spirit,
quoting _John 14:17_—“_whom the world cannot receive; for it
beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him_”; _16:7_—“_if I go, I will
send him unto you_”; _i. e._, Christ’s disciples were to be the
recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the
mediator between the Spirit and the world. Therefore _Mark
16:15_—“_Go ye into all the world, and preach,_” implies that the
Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not
go beyond the church’s evangelizing. But we reply that _Gen. 6:3_
implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.

B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (_a_) that inherited moral
evil does not involve guilt; (_b_) that the gift of the Spirit, and the
regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (_c_) that the effect of
grace is simply to restore man’s natural ability, instead of disposing him
to use that ability aright; (_d_) that election is God’s choice of certain
men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being
God’s choice to make certain men believers; (_e_) that physical death is
not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.

(_a_) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine,
2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is original _evil_ only,
not _guilt_. He explained the problem of original sin by denying
the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally
indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the
beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil
desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of
concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an
originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is
merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All
internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and
becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But
involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture
as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious
consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so
that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine
that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold
consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and
our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent
from sin.”

(_b_) H. B. Smith’s Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and
Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth
to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he
needs growth and grace too.” See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According
to Whedon, Com. on _Rom. 5:12_, “the condition of an infant apart
from Christ is that of a sinner, _as one sure to sin_, yet never
actually condemned before personal apostasy. This _would_ be its
condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and
justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual
sinners are apostates from a state of grace.” But we ask: 1. Why
then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely
not on account of Adam’s sin, for they are delivered from all the
evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still
somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so
soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are
in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they
were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal
regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and
observation.

(_c_) Notice that this “gracious” ability does not involve saving
grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men.
Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost
by Adam’s sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has
the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same
gracious ability chooses self. _1 Cor. 4:7_—“_who maketh thee to
differ?_” Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of
Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring
natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular,
irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words,
bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright. “Grace”
is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and
Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after
the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself,
by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon
God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and
acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing
us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we
have that good will.” It is important to understand that, in
Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man’s natural
ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only
enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly
bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly
bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a
compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.

(_d_) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1)
faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3)
regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not to _originate_
faith, but to _reward_ it. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and
regard election as God’s ordaining those who, he foresees, will of
their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary,
is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of
Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian
is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not
give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have
entered.... Do not believe the devil’s gospel, which is a _chance_
of salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.” Grace
is not a _reward_ for good deeds done, but a _power_ enabling us
to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629,
spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that
“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after
the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian
converts say: “I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts
say: “The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”
Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes
dependence upon God.

C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (_a_)
That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (_b_) That the power of
contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one’s
moral state, is essential to will. (_c_) That previous certainty of any
given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (_d_) That ability is
the measure of obligation. (_e_) That law condemns only volitional
transgression. (_f_) That man has no organic moral connection with the
race.

(_b_) Raymond says: “Man is responsible for character, but only so
far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for
character irrespective of its origin. Freedom _from_ an act is as
essential to responsibility as freedom _to_ it. If power to the
contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man.
Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.” But this is a
denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will
can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that
the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though
without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible
for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no
longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the
contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is
equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the
being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very
inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.

Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way
to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not
yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something
else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity.
The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and
truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to
exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally, _i. e._, with
reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done
away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of
volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”
Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining
possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the
will can reach a “moral necessity” of good, so it can through sin
reach a “moral necessity” of evil.

(_c_) Park: “The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is
its denial of the _certainty_ of human action—the idea that a man
may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a
contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can
choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The
New School view is better than this, for that holds to the
certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a
right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively
uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or
wrong. There is nothing, antecedently to choice, to decide the
choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that
man would not _certainly_ sin. The old Calvinists believe that
antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective
uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin,
and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no
such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed,
and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have.
The truth in ‘power to the contrary’ is simply the power of the
will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards
believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to
the contrary. The false ‘power to the contrary’ is _uncertainty_
how one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does
act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this
that Edwards opposes.”

(_e_) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free
volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of
retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical,
the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be
visited with retribution, as Adam’s concreated purity was not
meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude,
but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs
concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”

D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man’s
responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn
depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior
are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have
been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man’s
sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.

Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it “theoretically possible
that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and
willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will
certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is
grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know,
either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from
known and wilful transgressions.” J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and
Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to
the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any
period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life
developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the
first.” But, since grace merely restores ability without giving
the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not
logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant.
Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy,
for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism
knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the
problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin,
2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206;
28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56 _sq._

3. The New School Theory, or Theory of uncondemnable Vitiosity.

This theory is called New School, because of its recession from the old
Puritan anthropology of which Edwards and Bellamy in the last century were
the expounders. The New School theory is a general scheme built up by the
successive labors of Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Taylor, and Finney. It is
held at present by New School Presbyterians, and by the larger part of the
Congregational body.

According to this theory, all men are born with a physical and moral
constitution which predisposes them to sin, and all men do actually sin so
soon as they come to moral consciousness. This vitiosity of nature may be
called sinful, because it uniformly leads to sin; but it is not itself
sin, since nothing is to be properly denominated sin but the voluntary act
of transgressing known law.

God imputes to men only their own acts of personal transgression; he does
not impute to them Adam’s sin; neither original vitiosity nor physical
death are penal inflictions; they are simply consequences which God has in
his sovereignty ordained to mark his displeasure at Adam’s transgression,
and subject to which evils God immediately creates each human soul. In
Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies:
“spiritual death passed on all men, because all men have actually and
personally sinned.”

Edwards held that God imputes Adam’s sin to his posterity by
arbitrarily identifying them with him,—identity, on the theory of
continuous creation (see pages 415-418), being only what God
appoints. Since this did not furnish sufficient ground for
imputation, Edwards joined the Placean doctrine to the other, and
showed the justice of the condemnation by the fact that man is
depraved. He adds, moreover, the consideration that man ratifies
this depravity by his own act. So Edwards tried to combine three
views. But all were vitiated by his doctrine of continuous
creation, which logically made God the only cause in the universe,
and left no freedom, guilt, or responsibility to man. He held that
preservation is a continuous series of new divine volitions,
personal identity consisting in consciousness or rather memory,
with no necessity for identity of substance. He maintained that
God could give to an absolutely new creation the consciousness of
one just annihilated, and thereby the two would be identical. He
maintained this not only as a possibility, but as the actual fact.
See Lutheran Quarterly, April, 1901:149-169; and H. N. Gardiner,
in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596.

The idealistic philosophy of Edwards enables us to understand his
conception of the relation of the race to Adam. He believed in “a
real union between the root and the branches of the world of
mankind, established by the author of the whole system of the
universe ... the full consent of the hearts of Adam’s posterity to
the first apostasy ... and therefore the sin of the apostasy is
not theirs merely because God imputes it to them, but it is truly
and properly theirs, and _on that ground_ God imputes it to them.”
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:435-448, esp. 436, quotes from Edwards:
“The guilt a man has upon his soul at his first existence is one
and simple, _viz._: the guilt of the original apostasy, the guilt
of the sin by which the species first rebelled against God.”
Interpret this by other words of Edwards: “The child and the
acorn, which come into existence in the course of nature, are
truly immediately created by God”—_i. e._, continuously created
(quoted by Dodge, Christian Theology, 188). Allen, Jonathan
Edwards, 310—“It required but a step from the principle that each
individual has an identity of consciousness with Adam, to reach
the conclusion that each individual is Adam and repeats his
experience. Of every man it might be said that like Adam he comes
into the world attended by the divine nature, and like him sins
and falls. In this sense the sin of every man becomes original
sin.” Adam becomes not the head of humanity but its generic type.
Hence arises the New School doctrine of exclusively individual sin
and guilt.

Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:25, claims Edwards as a Traducianist. But
Fisher, Discussions, 240, shows that he was not. As we have seen
(Prolegomena, pages 48, 49), Edwards thought too little of
_nature_. He tended to Berkeleyanism as applied to mind. Hence the
chief good was in happiness—a form of _sensibility_. Virtue is
voluntary _choice_ of this good. Hence union of _acts_ and
_exercises_ with Adam was sufficient. This God’s will might make
identity of _being_ with him. Baird, Elohim Revealed, 250 _sq._,
says well, that “Edwards’s idea that the character of an act was
to be sought somewhere else than in its cause involves the
fallacious assumption that acts have a subsistence and moral
agency of their own apart from that of the actor.” This divergence
from the truth led to the Exercise-system of Hopkins and Emmons,
who not only denied moral character prior to individual choices
(_i. e._, denied sin of nature), but attributed all human acts and
exercises to the direct efficiency of God. Hopkins declared that
Adam’s act, in eating the forbidden fruit, was not the act of his
posterity; therefore they did not sin at the same time that he
did. The sinfulness of that act could not be transferred to them
afterwards; because the sinfulness of an act can no more be
transferred from one person to another than an act itself.
Therefore, though men became sinners by Adam, according to divine
constitution, yet they have, and are accountable for, no sins but
personal. See Woods, History of Andover Theological Seminary, 33.
So the doctrine of continuous creation led to the Exercise-system,
and the Exercise-system led to the theology of acts. On Emmons,
see Works, 4:502-507, and Bib. Sac., 7:479; 20:317; also H. B.
Smith, in Faith and Philosophy, 215-263.

N. W. Taylor, of New Haven, agreed with Hopkins and Emmons that
there is no imputation of Adam’s sin or of inborn depravity. He
called that depravity physical, not moral. But he repudiated the
doctrine of divine efficiency in the production of man’s acts and
exercises, and made all sin to be personal. He held to the power
of contrary choice. Adam had it, and contrary to the belief of
Augustinians, he never lost it. Man “not only can if he will, but
he can if he won’t.” He can, but, without the Spirit, will not. He
said: “Man can, whatever the Holy Spirit does or does not do”; but
also: “Man will not, unless the Holy Spirit helps”; “If I were as
eloquent as the Holy Ghost, I could convert sinners as fast as
he.” Yet he did not hold to the Arminian liberty of indifference
or contingence. He believed in the certainty of wrong action, yet
in power to the contrary. See Moral Government, 2:132—“The error
of Pelagius was not in asserting that man _can_ obey God without
grace, but in saying that man does _actually_ obey God without
grace.” There is a part of the sinner’s nature to which the
motives of the gospel may appeal—a part of his nature which is
neither holy nor unholy, _viz._, self-love, or innocent desire for
happiness. Greatest happiness is the ground of obligation. Under
the influence of motives appealing to happiness, the sinner can
suspend his choice of the world as his chief good, and can give
his heart to God. He can do this, whatever the Holy Spirit does,
or does not do; but the _moral_ inability can be overcome only by
the Holy Spirit, who moves the soul, without coercing, by means of
the truth. On Dr. Taylor’s system, and its connection with prior
New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions, 285-354.

This form of New School doctrine suggests the following questions:
1. Can the sinner suspend his selfishness before he is subdued by
divine grace? 2. Can his choice of God from mere self-love be a
holy choice? 3. Since God demands love in every choice, must it
not be a positively unholy choice? 4. If it is not itself a holy
choice, how can it be a beginning of holiness? 5. If the sinner
can become regenerate by preferring God on the ground of
self-interest, where is the necessity of the Holy Spirit to renew
the heart? 6. Does not this asserted ability of the sinner to turn
to God contradict consciousness and Scripture? For Taylor’s Views,
see his Revealed Theology, 134-309. For criticism of them, see
Hodge, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1868:63 sq., and 368-398; also,
Tyler, Letters on the New Haven Theology. Neither Hopkins and
Emmons on the one hand, nor Taylor on the other, represent most
fully the general course of New England theology. Smalley, Dwight,
Woods, all held to more conservative views than Taylor, or than
Finney, whose system had much resemblance to Taylor’s. All three
of these denied the power of contrary choice which Dr. Taylor so
strenuously maintained, although all agreed with him in denying
the imputation of Adam’s sin or of our hereditary depravity. These
are not sinful, except in the sense of being occasions of actual
sin.

Dr. Park, of Andover, was understood to teach that the disordered
state of the sensibilities and faculties with which we are born is
the _immediate_ occasion of sin, while Adam’s transgression is the
_remote_ occasion of sin. The will, though influenced by an evil
tendency, is still free; the evil tendency itself is not free, and
therefore is not sin. The Statement of New School doctrine given
in the text is intended to represent the common New England
doctrine, as taught by Smalley, Dwight, Woods and Park; although
the historical tendency, even among these theologians, has been to
emphasize less and less the depraved tendencies prior to actual
sin, and to maintain that moral character begins only with
individual choice, most of them, however, holding that this
individual choice begins at birth. See Bib. Sac., 7:552, 567;
8:607-647; 20:462-471, 576-593; Van Oosterzee, Christian
Dogmatics, 407-412; Foster, Hist. N. E. Theology.

Both Ritschl and Pfleiderer lean toward the New School
interpretation of sin. Ritschl, Unterricht, 25—“Universal death
was the consequence of the sin of the first man, and the death of
his posterity proved that they too had sinned.” Thus death is
universal, not because of natural generation from Adam, but
because of the individual sins of Adam’s posterity. Pfleiderer,
Grundriss, 122—“Sin is a direction of the will which contradicts
the moral Idea. As preceding personal acts of the will, it is not
personal guilt but imperfection or evil. When it persists in spite
of awaking moral consciousness, and by indulgence become habit, it
is guilty abnormity.”

To the New School theory we object as follows:

A. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining or implying: (_a_) That sin
consists solely in acts, and in the dispositions caused in each case by
man’s individual acts, and that the state which predisposes to acts of sin
is not itself sin. (_b_) That the vitiosity which predisposes to sin is a
part of each man’s nature as it proceeds from the creative hand of God.
(_c_) That physical death in the human race is not a penal consequence of
Adam’s transgression. (_d_) That infants, before moral consciousness, do
not need Christ’s sacrifice to save them. Since they are innocent, no
penalty rests upon them, and none needs to be removed. (_e_) That we are
neither condemned upon the ground of actual inbeing in Adam, nor justified
upon the ground of actual inbeing in Christ.

If a child may not be unholy before he voluntarily transgresses,
then, by parity of reasoning, Adam could not have been holy before
he obeyed the law, nor can a change of heart precede Christian
action. New School principles would compel us to assert that right
action precedes change of heart, and that obedience in Adam must
have preceded his holiness. Emmons held that, if children die
before they become moral agents, it is most rational to conclude
that they are annihilated. They are mere animals. The common New
School doctrine would regard them as saved either on account of
their innocence, or because the atonement of Christ avails to
remove the _consequences_ as well as the _penalty_ of sin.

But to say that infants are pure contradicts _Rom. 5:12_—“_all
sinned_”; _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your children unclean_”; _Eph.
2:3_—“_by nature children of wrath._” That Christ’s atonement
removes natural consequences of sin is nowhere asserted or implied
in Scripture. See, _per contra_, H. B. Smith, System, 271, where,
however, it is only maintained that Christ saves from all the
_just_ consequences of sin. But all _just_ consequences are
penalty, and should be so called. The exigencies of New School
doctrine compel it to put the beginning of sin in the infant at
the very first moment of its separate existence,—in order not to
contradict those Scriptures which speak of sin as being universal,
and of the atonement as being needed by all. Dr. Park held that
infants sin so soon as they are born. He was obliged to hold this,
or else to say that some members of the human race exist who are
not sinners. But by putting sin thus early in human experience,
all meaning is taken out of the New School definition of sin as
the “voluntary transgression of known law.” It is difficult to
say, upon this theory, what sort of a _choice_ the infant makes of
sin, or what sort of a _known law_ it violates.

The first need in a theory of sin is that of satisfying the
statements of Scripture. The second need is that it should point
out an act of man which will justify the infliction of pain,
suffering, and death upon the whole human race. Our moral sense
refuses to accept the conclusion that all this is a matter of
arbitrary sovereignty. We cannot find the act in each man’s
conscious transgression, nor in sin committed at birth. We do find
such a voluntary transgression of known law in Adam; and we claim
that the New School definition of sin is much more consistent with
this last explanation of sin’s origin than is the theory of a
multitude of individual transgressions.

The final test of every theory, however, is its conformity to
Scripture. We claim that a false philosophy prevents the advocates
of New School doctrine from understanding the utterances of Paul.
Their philosophy is a modified survival of atomistic Pelagianism.
They ignore nature in both God and man, and resolve character into
transient acts. The unconscious or subconscious state of the will
they take little or no account of, and the possibility of another
and higher life interpenetrating and transforming our own life is
seldom present to their minds. They have no proper idea of the
union of the believer with Christ, and so they have no proper idea
of the union of the race with Adam. They need to learn that, as
all the spiritual life of the race was in Christ, the second Adam,
so all the natural life of the race was in the first Adam; as we
derive righteousness from the former, so we derive corruption from
the latter. Because Christ’s life is in them, Paul can say that
all believers rose in Christ’s resurrection; because Adam’s life
is in them, he can say that in Adam all die. We should prefer to
say with Pfleiderer that Paul teaches this doctrine but that Paul
is no authority for us, rather than to profess acceptance of
Paul’s teaching while we ingeniously evade the force of his
argument. We agree with Stevens, Pauline Theology, 135, 136, that
all men “sinned in the same sense in which believers were
crucified to the world and died unto sin when Christ died upon the
cross.” But we protest that to make Christ’s death the mere
_occasion_ of the death of the believer, and Adam’s sin the mere
_occasion_ of the sins of men, is to ignore the central truths of
Paul’s teaching—the _vital union_ of the believer with Christ, and
the _vital union_ of the race with Adam.

B. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (_a_)
That the soul is immediately created by God. (_b_) That the law of God
consists wholly in outward command. (_c_) That present natural ability to
obey the law is the measure of obligation. (_d_) That man’s relations to
moral law are exclusively individual. (_e_) That the will is merely the
faculty of individual and personal choices. (_f_) That the will, at man’s
birth, has no moral state or character.

See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 250 _sq._—“Personality is inseparable
from nature. The one duty is love. Unless any given duty is
performed through the activity of a principle of love springing up
in the nature, it is not performed at all. _The law addresses the
nature._ The efficient cause of moral action is the proper subject
of moral law. It is only in the perversity of unscriptural
theology that we find the absurdity of separating the moral
character from the substance of the soul, and tying it to the
vanishing deeds of life. The idea that responsibility and sin are
predicable of actions merely is only consistent with an utter
denial that man’s nature as such owes anything to God, or has an
office to perform in showing forth his glory. It ignores the fact
that actions are empty phenomena, which in themselves have no
possible value. It is the heart, soul, might, mind, strength, with
which we are to love. Christ conformed to the law, by being ‘_that
holy thing_’ (_Luke 1:35_, marg.).”

Erroneous philosophical principles lie at the basis of New School
interpretations of Scripture. The solidarity of the race is
ignored, and all moral action is held to be individual. In our
discussion of the Augustinian theory of sin, we shall hope to show
that underlying Paul’s doctrine there is quite another philosophy.
Such a philosophy together with a deeper Christian experience
would have corrected the following statement of Paul’s view of
sin, by Orello Cone, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1898:241-267.
On the phrase _Rom. 5:12_—“_for that all sinned,_” he remarks: “If
under the new order men do not become righteous simply because of
the righteousness of Christ and without their choice, neither
under the old order did Paul think them to be subject to death
without their own acts of sin. Each representative head is
conceived only as the occasion of the results of his work, on the
one hand in the tragic order of death, and on the other hand in
the blessed order of life—the occasion indispensable to all that
follows in either order.... It may be questioned whether
Pfleiderer does not state the case too strongly when he says that
the sin of Adam’s posterity is regarded as ‘the necessary
consequence’ of the sin of Adam. It does not follow from the
employment of the aorist ἥμαρτον that the sinning of all is
contained in that of Adam, although this sense must be considered
as grammatically possible. It is not however the only
grammatically defensible sense. In _Rom. 3:23_, ἥμαρτον certainly
does not denote such a definite past act filling only one point of
time.” But we reply that the context determines that in _Rom.
5:12_, ἥμαρτον does denote such a definite past act; see our
interpretation of the whole passage, under the Augustinian Theory,
pages 625-627.

C. It impugns the justice of God:

(_a_) By regarding him as the direct creator of a vicious nature which
infallibly leads every human being into actual transgression. To maintain
that, in consequence of Adam’s act, God brings it about that all men
become sinners, and this, not by virtue of inherent laws of propagation,
but by the direct creation in each case of a vicious nature, is to make
God indirectly the author of sin.

(_b_) By representing him as the inflicter of suffering and death upon
millions of human beings who in the present life do not come to moral
consciousness, and who are therefore, according to the theory, perfectly
innocent. This is to make him visit Adam’s sin on his posterity, while at
the same time it denies that moral connection between Adam and his
posterity which alone could make such visitation just.

(_c_) By holding that the probation which God appoints to men is a
separate probation of each soul, when it first comes to moral
consciousness and is least qualified to decide aright. It is much more
consonant with our ideas of the divine justice that the decision should
have been made by the whole race, in one whose nature was pure and who
perfectly understood God’s law, than that heaven and hell should have been
determined for each of us by a decision made in our own inexperienced
childhood, under the influence of a vitiated nature.

On this theory, God determines, in his mere sovereignty, that
because one man sinned, all men should be called into existence
depraved, under a constitution which secures the certainty of
their sinning. But we claim that it is unjust that any should
suffer without ill-desert. To say that God thus marks his sense of
the guilt of Adam’s sin is to contradict the main principle of the
theory, namely, that men are held responsible only for their own
sins. We prefer to justify God by holding that there is a reason
for this infliction, and that this reason is the connection of the
infant with Adam. If mere tendency to sin is innocent, then Christ
might have taken it, when he took our nature. But if he had taken
it, it would not explain the fact of the atonement, for upon this
theory it would not need to be atoned for. To say that the child
inherits a sinful nature, not as penalty, but by natural law, is
to ignore the fact that this natural law is simply the regular
action of God, the expression of his moral nature, and so is
itself penalty.

“Man kills a snake,” says Raymond, “because it is a snake, and not
because it is to blame for being a snake,”—which seems to us a new
proof that the advocates of innocent depravity regard infants, not
as moral beings, but as mere animals. “We must distinguish
automatic excellence or badness,” says Raymond again, “from moral
desert, whether good or ill.” This seems to us a doctrine of
punishment without guilt. Princeton Essays, 1:138, quote
Coleridge: “It is an outrage on common sense to affirm that it is
no evil for men to be placed on their probation under such
circumstances that not one of ten thousand millions ever escapes
sin and condemnation to eternal death. There is evil inflicted on
us, as a consequence of Adam’s sin, antecedent to our personal
transgressions. It matters not what this evil is, whether temporal
death, corruption of nature, certainty of sin, or death in its
more extended sense; if the ground of the evil’s coming on us is
Adam’s sin, the principle is the same.” Baird, Elohim Revealed,
488—So, it seems, “if a creature is punished, it implies that some
one has sinned, but does not necessarily intimate the sufferer to
be the sinner! But this is wholly contrary to the argument of the
apostle in _Rom. 5:12-19_, which is based upon the opposite
doctrine, and it is also contrary to the justice of God, who
punishes only those who deserve it.” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin.
2:67-74.

D. Its limitation of responsibility to the evil choices of the individual
and the dispositions caused thereby is inconsistent with the following
facts:

(_a_) The first moral choice of each individual is so undeliberate as not
to be remembered. Put forth at birth, as the chief advocates of the New
School theory maintain, it does not answer to their definition of sin as a
voluntary transgression of known law. Responsibility for such choice does
not differ from responsibility for the inborn evil state of the will which
manifests itself in that choice.

(_b_) The uniformity of sinful action among men cannot be explained by the
existence of a mere faculty of choices. That men should uniformly choose
may be thus explained; but that men should uniformly choose evil requires
us to postulate an evil tendency or state of the will itself, prior to
these separate acts of choice. This evil tendency or inborn determination
to evil, since it is the real cause of actual sins, must itself be sin,
and as such must be guilty and condemnable.

(_c_) Power in the will to prevent the inborn vitiosity from developing
itself is upon this theory a necessary condition of responsibility for
actual sins. But the absolute uniformity of actual transgression is
evidence that the will is practically impotent. If responsibility
diminishes as the difficulties in the way of free decision increase, the
fact that these difficulties are insuperable shows that there can be no
responsibility at all. To deny the guilt of inborn sin is therefore
virtually to deny the guilt of the actual sin which springs therefrom.

The aim of all the theories is to find a decision of the will
which will justify God in condemning men. Where shall we find such
a decision? At the age of fifteen, ten, five? Then all who die
before this age are not sinners, cannot justly be punished with
death, do not need a Savior. Is it at birth? But decision at such
a time is not such a conscious decision against God as, according
to this theory, would make it the proper determiner of our future
destiny. We claim that the theory of Augustine—that of a sin of
the race in Adam—is the only one that shows a conscious
transgression fit to be the cause and ground of man’s guilt and
condemnation.

Wm. Adams Brown: “Who can tell how far his own acts are caused by
his own will, and how far by the nature he has inherited? Men do
feel guilty for acts which are largely due to their inherited
natures, which inherited corruption is guilt, deserving of
punishment and certain to receive it.” H. B. Smith, System, 350,
note—“It has been said, in the way of a taunt against the older
theology, that men are very willing to speculate about sinning in
Adam, so as to have their attention diverted from the sense of
personal guilt. But the whole history of theology bears witness
that those who have believed most fully in our native and strictly
moral corruption—as Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards—have ever had
the deepest sense of their personal demerit. We know the full evil
of sin only when we know its roots as well as its fruits.”

“Causa causæ est causa causati.” Inborn depravity is the cause of
the first actual sin. The cause of inborn depravity is the sin of
Adam. If there be no guilt in original sin, then the actual sin
that springs therefrom cannot be guilty. There are subsequent
presumptuous sins in which the personal element overbears the
element of race and heredity. But this cannot be said of the first
acts which make man a sinner. These are so naturally and uniformly
the result of the inborn determination of the will, that they
cannot be guilty, unless that inborn determination is also guilty.
In short, not all sin is personal. There must be a sin of nature—a
race-sin—or the beginnings of actual sin cannot be accounted for
or regarded as objects of God’s condemnation. Julius Müller,
Doctrine of Sin, 2:320-328, 341—“If the deep-rooted depravity
which we bring with us into the world be not our sin, it at once
becomes an excuse for our actual sins.” Princeton Essays, 1:138,
139—Alternative: 1. May a man by his own power prevent the
development of this hereditary depravity? Then we do not know that
all men are sinners, or that Christ’s salvation is needed by all.
2. Is actual sin a necessary consequence of hereditary depravity?
Then it is, on this theory, a free act no longer, and is not
guilty, since guilt is predicable only of voluntary transgression
of known law. See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 256 sq.; Hodge, Essays,
571-638; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:61-73; Edwards on the Will,
part iii, sec. 4; Bib. Sac., 20:317-320.

4. The Federal Theory, or Theory of Condemnation by Covenant.

The Federal theory, or theory of the Covenants, had its origin with
Cocceius (1608-1669), professor at Leyden, but was more fully elaborated
by Turretin (1623-1687). It has become a tenet of the Reformed as
distinguished from the Lutheran church, and in this country it has its
main advocates in the Princeton school of theologians, of whom Dr. Charles
Hodge was the representative.

According to this view, Adam was constituted by God’s sovereign
appointment the representative of the whole human race. With Adam as their
representative, God entered into covenant, agreeing to bestow upon them
eternal life on condition of his obedience, but making the penalty of his
disobedience to be the corruption and death of all his posterity. In
accordance with the terms of this covenant, since Adam sinned, God
accounts all his descendants as sinners, and condemns them because of
Adam’s transgression.

In execution of this sentence of condemnation, God immediately creates
each soul of Adam’s posterity with a corrupt and depraved nature, which
infallibly leads to sin, and which is itself sin. The theory is therefore
a theory of the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, their
corruption of nature not being the cause of that imputation, but the
effect of it. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all
sinned,” signifies: “physical, spiritual, and eternal death came to all,
because all were regarded and treated as sinners.”

Fisher, Discussions, 355-409, compares the Augustinian and Federal
theories of Original Sin. His account of the Federal theory and
its origin is substantially as follows: The Federal theory is a
theory of the covenants (_fœdus_, a covenant). 1. The covenant is
a sovereign constitution imposed by God. 2. Federal union is the
legal ground of imputation, though kinship to Adam is the reason
why Adam and not another was selected as our representative. 3.
Our guilt for Adam’s sin is simply a legal responsibility. 4. That
imputed sin is punished by inborn depravity, and that inborn
depravity by eternal death. Augustine could not reconcile inherent
depravity with the justice of God; hence he held that we sinned in
Adam.

So Anselm says: “Because the whole human nature was in them (Adam
and Eve), and outside of them there was nothing of it, the whole
was weakened and corrupted.” After the first sin “this nature was
propagated just as it had made itself by sinning.” All sin belongs
to the will; but this is a part of our inheritance. The
descendants of Adam were not in him as individuals; yet what he
did as a person, he did not do _sine natura_, and this nature is
ours as well as his. So Peter Lombard. Sins of our immediate
ancestors, because they are qualities which are purely personal,
are not propagated. After Adam’s first sin, the actual qualities
of the first parent or of other later parents do not corrupt the
nature as concerns its qualities, but only as concerns the
qualities of the _person_.

Calvin maintained two propositions: 1. We are not condemned for
Adam’s sin apart from our own inherent depravity which is derived
from him. The sin for which we are condemned is our own sin. 2.
This sin is ours, for the reason that our nature is vitiated in
Adam, and we receive it in the condition in which it was put by
the first transgression. Melanchthon also held to an imputation of
the first sin conditioned upon our innate depravity. The impulse
to Federalism was given by the difficulty, on the pure Augustinian
theory, of accounting for the non-imputation of Adam’s subsequent
sins, and those of his posterity.

Cocceius (Dutch, Coch: English, Cook), the author of the
covenant-theory, conceived that he had solved this difficulty by
making Adam’s sin to be imputed to us upon the ground of a
covenant between God and Adam, according to which Adam was to
stand as the representative of his posterity. In Cocceius’s use of
the term, however, the only difference between covenant and
command is found in the promise attached to the keeping of it.
Fisher remarks on the mistake, in modern defenders of imputation,
of ignoring the capital fact of a true and real participation in
Adam’s sin. The great body of Calvinistic theologians in the 17th
century were Augustinians as well as Federalists. So Owen and the
Westminster Confession. Turretin, however, almost merged the
natural relation to Adam in the federal.

Edwards fell back on the old doctrine of Aquinas and Augustine. He
tried to make out a real participation in the first sin. The first
rising of sinful inclination, by a divinely constituted identity,
_is_ this participation. But Hopkins and Emmons regarded the
sinful inclination, not as a _real_ participation, but only as a
_constructive_ consent to Adam’s first sin. Hence the New School
theology, in which the imputation of Adam’s sin was given up. On
the contrary, Calvinists of the Princeton school planted
themselves on the Federal theory, and taking Turretin as their
text book, waged war on New England views, not wholly sparing
Edwards himself. After this review of the origin of the theory,
for which we are mainly indebted to Fisher, it can be easily seen
how little show of truth there is in the assumption of the
Princeton theologians that the Federal theory is “the immemorial
doctrine of the church of God.”

Statements of the theory are found in Cocceius, Summa Doctrinæ de
Fœdere, cap. 1, 5; Turretin, Inst., loc. 9, quæs. 9; Princeton
Essays, 1:98-185. esp. 120—“In imputation there is, first, an
ascription of something to those concerned; secondly, a
determination to deal with them accordingly.” The ground for this
imputation is “the union between Adam and his posterity, which is
twofold,—a natural union, as between father and children, and the
union of representation, _which is the main idea here insisted
on_.” 123—“As in Christ we are constituted righteous by the
imputation of righteousness, so in Adam we are made sinners by the
imputation of his sin.... Guilt is liability or exposedness to
punishment; it does not in theological usage imply moral turpitude
or criminality.” 162—Turretin is quoted: “The foundation,
therefore, of imputation is not merely the _natural_ connection
which exists between us and Adam—for, were this the case, all his
sins would be imputed to us, but principally the _moral_ and
_federal_, on the ground of which God entered into covenant with
him as our head. Hence in that sin Adam acted not as a private but
a public person and representative.” The oneness results from
contract; the natural union is frequently not mentioned at all.
Marck: All men sinned in Adam, “_eos representante_.” The acts of
Adam and of Christ are ours “_jure representationis_.”

G. W. Northrup makes the order of the Federal theory to be: “(1)
imputation of Adam’s guilt; (2) condemnation on the ground of this
imputed guilt; (3) corruption of nature consequent upon treatment
as condemned. So judicial imputation of Adam’s sin is the cause
and ground of innate corruption.... All the acts, with the single
exception of the sin of Adam, are divine acts: the appointment of
Adam, the creation of his descendants, the imputation of his
guilt, the condemnation of his posterity, their consequent
corruption. Here we have guilt without sin, exposure to divine
wrath without ill-desert, God regarding men as being what they are
not, punishing them on the ground of a sin committed before they
existed, and visiting them with gratuitous condemnation and
gratuitous reprobation. Here are arbitrary representation,
fictitious imputation, constructive guilt, limited atonement.” The
Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882:30, claims that Kloppenburg (1642) preceded
Cocceius (1648) in holding to the theory of the Covenants, as did
also the Canons of Dort. For additional statements of Federalism,
see Hodge, Essays, 49-86, and Syst. Theol., 2:192-204; Bib. Sac.,
21:95-107; Cunningham, Historical Theology.

To the Federal theory we object:

A. It is extra-Scriptural, there being no mention of such a covenant with
Adam in the account of man’s trial. The assumed allusion to Adam’s
apostasy in Hosea 6:7, where the word “covenant” is used, is too
precarious and too obviously metaphorical to afford the basis for a scheme
of imputation (see Henderson, Com. on Minor Prophets, _in loco_). In Heb.
8:8—“new covenant”—there is suggested a contrast, not with an Adamic, but
with the Mosaic, covenant (_cf._ verse 9).

In _Hosea 6:7_—“_they like Adam_ [marg. “_men_”] _have
transgressed the covenant_” (Rev. Ver.)—the correct translation is
given by Henderson, Minor Prophets: “_But they, like men that
break a covenant, there they proved false to me_.” LXX: αὐτοὶ δέ
εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος παραβαίνων διαθήκην. De Wette: “Aber sie
übertreten den Bund nach Menschenart; daselbst sind sie mir
treulos.” Here the word _adam_, translated “man,” either means “a
man,” or “man,” _i. e._, generic man. “Israel had as little regard
to their covenants with God as men of unprincipled character have
for ordinary contracts.” “Like a man”—as men do. Compare _Ps.
82:7_—“_ye shall die like men_”; _Hosea 8:1, 2_—“_they have
transgressed my covenant_”—an allusion to the Abrahamic or Mosaic
covenant. _Heb. 8:9_—“_Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the
house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with
their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them
forth out of the land of Egypt._”

B. It contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam’s sin to
be God’s _regarding and treating_ the race as sinners. The Scripture, on
the contrary, declares that Adam’s offense _constituted_ us sinners (Rom.
5:19). We are not sinners simply because God regards and treats us as
such, but God regards us as sinners because we are sinners. Death is said
to have “passed unto all men,” not because all were regarded and treated
as sinners, but “because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).

For a full exegesis of the passage _Rom. 5:12-19_, see note to the
discussion of the Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship, pages
625-627. Dr. Park gave great offence by saying that the so-called
“covenants” of law and of grace, referred in the Westminster
Confession as made by God with Adam and Christ respectively, were
really “made in Holland.” The word _fœdus_, in such a connection,
could properly mean nothing more than “ordinance”; see Vergil,
Georgics, 1:60-63—“eterna fœdera.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol.,
185—“God’s ‘covenant’ with men is simply his method of dealing
with them according to their knowledge and opportunities.”

C. It impugns the justice of God by implying:

(_a_) That God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant which
they had no part in establishing. The assumed covenant is only a sovereign
decree; the assumed justice, only arbitrary will.

We not only never authorized Adam to make such a covenant, but
there is no evidence that he ever made one at all. It is not even
certain that Adam knew he should have posterity. In the case of
the imputation of our sins to Christ, Christ covenanted
voluntarily to bear them, and joined himself to our nature that he
might bear them. In the case of the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness to us, we first become one with Christ, and upon the
ground of our union with him are justified. But upon the Federal
theory, we are condemned upon the ground of a covenant which we
neither instituted, nor participated in, nor assented to.

(_b_) That upon the basis of this covenant God accounts men as sinners who
are not sinners. But God judges according to truth. His condemnations do
not proceed upon a basis of legal fiction. He can regard as responsible
for Adam’s transgression only those who in some real sense have been
concerned, and have had part, in that transgression.

See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 544—“Here is a sin, which is no crime,
but a mere condition of being regarded and treated as sinners; and
a guilt, which is devoid of sinfulness, and which does not imply
moral demerit or turpitude,”—that is, a sin which is no sin, and a
guilt which is no guilt. Why might not God as justly reckon Adam’s
sin to the account of the fallen angels, and punish them for it?
Dorner, System Doct., 2:351; 3:53, 54—“Hollaz held that God treats
men in accordance with what he foresaw all would do, if they were
in Adam’s place” (_scientia media_ and _imputatio metaphysica_).
Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 141—“Immediate imputation is as
unjust as _imputatio metaphysica_, _i. e._, God’s condemning us
for what he knew we would have done in Adam’s place. On such a
theory there is no need of a trial at all. God might condemn half
the race at once to hell without probation, on the ground that
they would ultimately sin and come thither at any rate.”
Justification can be gratuitous, but not condemnation. “Like the
social-compact theory of government, the covenant-theory of sin is
a mere legal fiction. It explains, only to belittle. The theory of
New England theology, which attributes to mere sovereignty God’s
making us sinners in consequence of Adam’s sin, is more reasonable
than the Federal theory” (Fisher).

Professor Moses Stuart characterized this theory as one of
“fictitious guilt, but veritable damnation.” The divine economy
admits of no fictitious substitutions nor forensic evasions. No
legal quibbles can modify eternal justice. Federalism reverses the
proper order, and puts the effect before the cause, as is the case
with the social-compact theory of government. Ritchie, Darwin and
Hegel, 27—“It is illogical to say that society originated in a
contract; for contract presupposes society.” Unus homo, nullus
homo—without society, no persons. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to
Ethics, 351—“No individual can make a conscience for himself. He
always needs a society to make it for him....” 200—“Only through
society is personality actualized.” Boyce, Spirit of Modern
Philosophy, 209, note—“Organic Interrelationship of individuals is
the condition even of their relatively independent selfhood.” We
are “_members one of another_” (_Rom. 12:15_). Schurman,
Agnosticism, 176—“The individual could never have developed into a
personality but for his training through society and under law.”
Imagine a theory that the family originated in a compact! We must
not define the state by its first crude beginnings, any more than
we define the oak by the acorn. On the theory of a social-compact,
see Lowell, Essays on Government, 136-188.

(_c_) That, after accounting men to be sinners who are not sinners, God
makes them sinners by immediately creating each human soul with a corrupt
nature such as will correspond to his decree. This is not only to assume a
false view of the origin of the soul, but also to make God directly the
author of sin. Imputation of sin cannot precede and account for
corruption; on the contrary, corruption must precede and account for
imputation.

By God’s act we became depraved, as a penal consequence of Adam’s
act imputed to us solely as _peccatum alienum_. Dabney, Theology,
342, says the theory regards the soul as originally pure until
imputation. See Hodge on _Rom. 5:13_; Syst. Theol., 2:203, 210;
Thornwell, Theology, 1:343-349; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:485, 487.
The Federal theory “makes sin in us to be the penalty of another’s
sin, instead of being the penalty of our own sin, as on the
Augustinian scheme, which regards depravity in us as the
punishment of our own sin in Adam.... It holds to a sin which does
not bring eternal punishment, but for which we are legally
responsible as truly as Adam.” It only remains to say that Dr.
Hodge always persistently refused to admit the one added element
which might have made his view less arbitrary and mechanical,
namely, the traducian theory of the origin of the soul. He was a
creatianist, and to the end maintained that God immediately
created the soul, and created it depraved. Acceptance of the
traducian theory would have compelled him to exchange his
Federalism for Augustinianism. Creatianism was the one remaining
element of Pelagian atomism in an otherwise Scriptural theory. Yet
Dr. Hodge regarded this as an essential part of Biblical teaching.
His unwavering confidence was like that of Fichte, whom Caroline
Schelling represented as saying: “Zweifle an der Sonne Klarheit,
Zweifle an der Sterne Licht, Leser, nur an meiner Wahrheit Und an
deiner Dummheit, nicht.”

As a corrective to the atomistic spirit of Federalism we may quote
a view which seems to us far more tenable, though it perhaps goes
to the opposite extreme. Dr. H. H. Bawden writes: “The self is the
product of a social environment. An ascetic self is so far forth
not a self. Selfhood and consciousness are essentially social. We
are members one of another. The biological view of selfhood
regards it as a function, activity, process, inseparable from the
social matrix out of which it has arisen. Consciousness is simply
the name for the functioning of an organism. Not that the soul is
a secretion of the brain, as bile is a secretion of the liver; not
that the mind is a function of the body in any such materialistic
sense. But that mind or consciousness is only the growing of an
organism, while, on the other hand, the organism is just that
which grows. The psychical is not a second, subtle, parallel form
of energy causally interactive with the physical; much less is it
a concomitant series, as the parallelists hold. Consciousness is
not an order of existence or a thing, but rather a function. It is
the organization of reality, the universe coming to a focus,
flowering, so to speak, in a finite centre. Society is an organism
in the same sense as the human body. The separation of the units
of society is no greater than the separation of the unit factors
of the body,—in the microscope the molecules are far apart.
Society is a great sphere with many smaller spheres within it.

“Each self is not impervious to other selves. Selves are not
water-tight compartments, each one of which might remain complete
in itself, even if all the others were destroyed. But there are
open sluiceways between all the compartments. Society is a vast
plexus of interweaving personalities. We are members one of
another. What affects my neighbor affects me, and what affects me
ultimately affects my neighbor. The individual is not an
impenetrable atomic unit.... The self is simply the social whole
coming to consciousness at some particular point. Every self is
rooted in the social organism of which it is but a local and
individual expression. A self is a mere cipher apart from its
social relations. As the old Greek adage has it: ‘He who lives
quite alone is either a beast or a god.’ ” While we regard this
exposition of Dr. Bawden as throwing light upon the origin of
consciousness and so helping our contention against the Federal
theory of sin, we do not regard it as proving that consciousness,
once developed, may not become relatively independent and
immortal. Back of society, as well as back of the individual, lies
the consciousness and will of God, in whom alone is the guarantee
of persistence. For objections to the Federal theory, see Fisher,
Discussions, 401 _sq._; Bib. Sac., 20:455-462, 577; New Englander,
1868:551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.

5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.

This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606-1655), professor of
Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam’s sin
was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was
condemned by the Synod of the French Reformed Church at Charenton in 1644,
he published the view which now bears his name.

According to this view, all men are born physically and morally depraved;
this native depravity is the source of all actual sin, and is itself sin;
in strictness of speech, it is this native depravity, and this only, which
God imputes to men. So far as man’s physical nature is concerned, this
inborn sinfulness has descended by natural laws of propagation from Adam
to all his posterity. The soul is immediately created by God, but it
becomes actively corrupt so soon as it is united to the body. Inborn
sinfulness is the consequence, though not the penalty, of Adam’s
transgression.

There is a sense, therefore, in which Adam’s sin may be said to be imputed
to his descendants,—it is imputed, not immediately, as if they had been in
Adam or were so represented in him that it could be charged directly to
them, corruption not intervening,—but it is imputed mediately, through and
on account of the intervening corruption which resulted from Adam’s sin.
As on the Federal theory imputation is the cause of depravity, so on this
theory depravity is the cause of imputation. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed
unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual,
and eternal passed upon all men, because all sinned by possessing a
depraved nature.”

See Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera,
1:709—“The sensitive soul is produced from the parent; the
intellectual or rational soul is directly created. The soul, on
entering the corrupted physical nature, is not passively
corrupted, but becomes corrupt actively, accommodating itself to
the other part of human nature in character.” 710—So this soul
“contracts from the vitiosity of the dispositions of the body a
corresponding vitiosity, not so much by the action of the body
upon the soul, as by that essential appetite of the soul by which
it unites itself to the body in a way accommodated to the
dispositions of the body, as liquid put into a bowl accommodates
itself to the figure of a bowl—sicut vinum in vase acetoso. God
was therefore neither the author of Adam’s fall, nor of the
propagation of sin.”

Herzog, Encyclopædia, art.: Placeus—“In the title of his works we
read ‘Placæus’; he himself, however, wrote ‘Placeus,’ which is the
more correct Latin form [of the French ‘de la Place’]. In Adam’s
first sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning and
the first habitual sin (corrupted disposition). The former was
transient; the latter clung to his person, and was propagated to
all. It is truly sin, and it is imputed to all, since it makes all
condemnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted
disposition, but not in the imputation of the first act of Adam,
except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited
depravity.” Fisher, Discussions, 389—“Mere native corruption is
the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term
‘imputation’ by _Rom. 2:26_—‘_If therefore the uncircumcision keep
the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be
reckoned_ [imputed] _for circumcision?_’ Our own depravity is the
necessary condition of the imputation of Adam’s sin, just as our
own faith is the necessary condition of the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness.”

Advocates of Mediate Imputation are, in Great Britain, G. Payne,
in his book entitled: Original Sin; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
Christianity, 1:196-332; and James S. Candlish, Biblical Doctrine
of Sin, 111-122; in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of
Christian Doctrine, 169, 284, 285, 314-323; and E. G. Robinson,
Christian Theology. The editor of Dr. Smith’s work says: “On the
whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a
note which reads thus: ‘Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation
is wholly satisfactory.’ Understand by ‘Mediate Imputation’ a full
statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it;
understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation
of the facts, and it was ‘not wholly satisfactory.’ ” Dr. Smith
himself says, 316—“Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral
conditions of human nature as from Adam—generic: and it is not a
doctrine respecting personal liabilities and desert. For the
latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking,
it is not sin, which is ill-deserving, but only the sinner. The
ultimate distinction is here: There is a well-grounded difference
to be made between personal desert, strictly personal character
and liabilities (of each individual under the divine law, as
applied specifically, _e. g._, in the last adjudication), and a
generic moral condition—the antecedent ground of such personal
character.

“The distinction, however, is not between what has moral quality
and what has not, but between the moral state of each as a member
of the race, and his personal liabilities and desert as an
individual. This original sin would wear to us only the character
of evil, and not of sinfulness, were it not for _the fact_ that we
feel guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us
in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a sense
of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover,
redemption is also necessary to remove it, which shows that it is
a moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two
extreme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin
consists in sinning. The guilt of Adam’s sin is—this exposure,
this liability on account of such native corruption, our having
the same nature in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam’s sin is
_not to be separated_ from the existence of this evil disposition.
And this guilt is what is imputed to us.” See art. on H. B. Smith,
in Presb. Rev., 1881; “He did not fully acquiesce in Placeus’s
view, which makes the corrupt nature by descent the only ground of
imputation.”

The theory of Mediate Imputation is exposed to the following objections:

A. It gives no explanation of man’s responsibility for his inborn
depravity. No explanation of this is possible, which does not regard man’s
depravity as having had its origin in a free personal act, either of the
individual, or of collective human nature in its first father and head.
But this participation of all men in Adam’s sin the theory expressly
denies.

The theory holds that we are responsible for the effect, but not
for the cause—“post Adamum, non propter Adamum.” But, says Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:209, 331—“If this sinful tendency be in us
solely through the act of others, and not through our own deed,
they, and not we, are responsible for it,—it is not our guilt, but
our misfortune. And even as to actual sins which spring from this
inherent sinful tendency, these are not strictly our own, but the
acts of our first parents through us. Why impute them to us as
actual sins, for which we are to be condemned? Thus, if we deny
the existence of guilt, we destroy the reality of sin, and _vice
versa_.” Thornwell, Theology, 1:348, 349—This theory “does not
explain the sense of guilt, as connected with depravity of
nature,—how the feeling of ill-desert can arise in relation to a
state of mind of which we have been only passive recipients. The
child does not reproach himself for the afflictions which a
father’s follies have brought upon him. But our inward corruption
we do feel to be our own fault,—it is our crime as well as our
shame.”

B. Since the origination of this corrupt nature cannot be charged to the
account of man, man’s inheritance of it must be regarded in the light of
an arbitrary divine infliction—a conclusion which reflects upon the
justice of God. Man is not only condemned for a sinfulness of which God is
the author, but is condemned without any real probation, either individual
or collective.

Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate
Imputation, because: “1. It casts so faint a light on the justice
of God in the imputation of Adam’s sin to adults who do as he did.
2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into
existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The
inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a
riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding.” It is unjust to
hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the
cause.

C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of
human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first
parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine
sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the
sin of the race in Adam (Rom. 5:16, 18). It moreover does violence to the
Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of “all sinned,” in Rom.
5:12—words which imply the oneness of the race with Adam, and the
causative relation of Adam’s sin to our guilt.

Certain passages which Dr. H. B. Smith, System, 317, quotes from
Edwards, as favoring the theory of Mediate Imputation, seem to us
to favor quite a different view. See Edwards, 2:482 _sq._—“The
first existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to
be looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their
participation in Adam’s first sin; it is, as it were, the extended
pollution of that sin through the whole tree, by virtue of the
constituted union of the branches with the root.... I am humbly of
the opinion that, if any have supposed the children of Adam to
come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam’s
sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart,
they have not so well considered the matter.” And afterwards:
“Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co-existence) is in
consequence of the union,”—but “not properly a consequence of the
imputation of his sin; nay, rather antecedent to it, as it was in
Adam himself. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of
that sin, are both the consequences of that established union; but
yet in such order, that the evil disposition is first, and the
charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam
himself.”

Edwards quotes Stapfer: “The Reformed divines do not hold
immediate and mediate imputation _separately_, but always
together.” And still further, 2:493—“And therefore the sin of the
apostasy is not theirs, merely because God imputes it to them; but
it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it
to them.” It seems to us that Dr. Smith mistakes the drift of
these passages from Edwards, and that in making the identification
with Adam primary, and imputation of his sin secondary, they favor
the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship rather than the theory of
Mediate Imputation. Edwards regards the order as (1) apostasy; (2)
depravity; (3) guilt;—but in all three, Adam and we are, by divine
constitution, one. To be guilty of the depravity, therefore, we
must first be guilty of the apostasy.

For the reasons above mentioned we regard the theory of Mediate
Imputation as a half-way house where there is no permanent
lodgment. The logical mind can find no satisfaction therein, but
is driven either forward, to the Augustinian doctrine which we are
next to consider, or backward, to the New School doctrine with its
atomistic conception of man and its arbitrary sovereignty of God.
On the theory of Mediate Imputation, see Cunningham, Historical
Theology, 1:496-639; Princeton Essays, 1:129, 154, 168; Hodge,
Syst. Theology, 2:205-214; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:158;
Baird, Elohim Revealed, 46, 47, 474-479, 504-507.

6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

This theory was first elaborated by Augustine (354-430), the great
opponent of Pelagius; although its central feature appears in the writings
of Tertullian (died about 220), Hilary (350), and Ambrose (374). It is
frequently designated as the Augustinian view of sin. It was the view held
by the Reformers, Zwingle excepted. Its principal advocates in this
country are Dr. Shedd and Dr. Baird.

It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his
posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole
race at the time of Adam’s transgression existed, not individually, but
seminally, in him as its head. The total life of humanity was then in
Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet
individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now
exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam’s will
was yet the will of the species. In Adam’s free act, the will of the race
revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature
which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not
the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from
him.”

Adam’s sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something
foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed
as one moral person or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that
transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to
evil. In Rom. 5:12—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”
signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed unto all men,
because all sinned in Adam their natural head.”

Milton, Par. Lost, 9:414—“Where likeliest he [Satan] might find
The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his
purpos’d prey.” Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3:7—“In Adamo
omnes tune peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille
unus fuerunt”; De Civ. Dei, 13, 14—“Omnes enim fuimus in illo uno,
quando omnes fuimus ille unus.... Nondum erat nobis singillatim
creata et distributa forma in qua singuli viveremus, sed jam
natura erat seminalis ex qua propagaremur.” On Augustine’s view,
see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2; 43-45 (System Doct., 2:338, 339)—In
opposition to Pelagius who made sin to consist in single acts,
“Augustine emphasized the sinful state. This was a deprivation of
original righteousness + inordinate love. Tertullian, Cyprian,
Hilarius, Ambrose had advocated traducianism, according to which,
without their personal participation, the sinfulness of all is
grounded in Adam’s free act. They incur its consequences as an
evil which is, at the same time, punishment of the inherited
fault. But Irenæus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, say Adam was not
simply a single individual, but the universal man. We were
comprehended in him, so that in him we sinned. On the first view,
the posterity were passive; on the second, they were active, in
Adam’s sin. Augustine represents both views, desiring to unite the
universal sinfulness involved in traducianism with the universal
will and guilt involved in cooperation with Adam’s sin. Adam,
therefore, to him, is a double conception, and = individual +
race.”

Mozley on Predestination, 402—“In Augustine, some passages refer
all wickedness to original sin; some account for different degrees
of evil by different degrees of original sin (Op. imp. cont.
Julianum, 4:128—‘Malitia naturalis.... in aliis minor, in aliis
major est’); in some, the individual seems to add to original sin
(De Correp. et Gratia, c. 13—‘Per liberum arbitrium alia insuper
addiderunt, alii majus, alii minus, sed omnes mali.’ De Grat. et
Lib. Arbit., 2:1—‘Added to the sin of their birth sins of their
own commission’; 2:4—‘Neither denies our liberty of will, whether
to choose an evil or a good life, nor attributes to it so much
power that it can avail anything without God’s grace, or that it
can change itself from evil to good’).” These passages seem to
show that, side by side with the race-sin and its development,
Augustine recognized a domain of free personal decision, by which
each man could to some extent modify his character, and make
himself more or less depraved.

The theory of Augustine was not the mere result of Augustine’s
temperament or of Augustine’s sins. Many men have sinned like
Augustine, but their intellects have only been benumbed and have
been led into all manner of unbelief. It was the Holy Spirit who
took possession of the temperament, and so overruled the sin as to
make it a glass through which Augustine saw the depths of his
nature. Nor was his doctrine one of exclusive divine
transcendence, which left man a helpless worm at enmity with
infinite justice. He was also a passionate believer in the
immanence of God. He writes: “I could not be, O my God, could not
be at all, wert not thou in me; rather, were not I in thee, of
whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are are all
things.... O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is
restless, till it find rest in thee.—The will of God is the very
nature of things—Dei voluntas rerum natura est.”

Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, Introduction, very
erroneously declares that “the Augustinian theology rests upon the
transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle, and at every
point appears as an inferior rendering of the earlier
interpretation of the Christian faith.” On the other hand, L. L.
Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 69, 368-397, shows that, while
Athanasius held to a dualistic transcendence, Augustine held to a
theistic immanence: “Thus the Stoic, Neo-Platonic immanence, with
Augustine, supplants the Platonico-Aristotelian and Athanasian
transcendence.” Alexander, Theories of the Will, 90—“The theories
of the early Fathers were indeterministic, and the pronounced
Augustinianism of Augustine was the result of the rise into
prominence of the doctrine of original sin.... The early Fathers
thought of the origin of sin in angels and in Adam as due to free
will. Augustine thought of the origin of sin in Adam’s posterity
as due to inherited evil will.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums,
161—“To this day in Catholicism inward and living piety and the
expression of it is in essence wholly Augustinian.”

Calvin was essentially Augustinian and realistic; see his
Institutes, book 2, chap. 1-3; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:505, 506,
with the quotations and references. Zwingle was not an
Augustinian. He held that native vitiosity, although it is the
uniform occasion of sin, is not itself sin: “It is not a crime,
but a condition and a disease.” See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct. 2:256,
with references. Zwingle taught that every new-born child—thanks
to Christ’s making alive of all those who had died in Adam—is as
free from any taint of sin as Adam was before the fall. The
Reformers, however, with the single exception of Zwingle, were
Augustinians, and accounted for the hereditary guilt of mankind,
not by the fact that all men were represented in Adam, but that
all men participated in Adam’s sin. This is still the doctrine of
the Lutheran church.

The theory of Adam’s Natural Headship regards humanity at large as
the outgrowth of one germ. Though the leaves of a tree appear as
disconnected units when we look down upon them from above, a view
from beneath will discern the common connection with the twigs,
branches, trunk, and will finally trace their life to the root,
and to the seed from which it originally sprang. The race of man
is one because it sprang from one head. Its members are not to be
regarded atomistically, as segregated individuals; the deeper
truth is the truth of organic unity. Yet we are not philosophical
realists; we do not believe in the separate existence of
universals. We hold, not to _universalia ante rem_, which is
extreme realism; nor to _universalia post rem_, which is
nominalism; but to _universalia in re_, which is moderate realism.
Extreme realism cannot see the trees for the wood; nominalism
cannot see the wood for the trees; moderate realism sees the wood
in the trees. We hold to “_universalia in re_, but insist that the
universals must be recognized as _realities_, as truly as the
individuals are” (H. B. Smith, System, 319, note). Three acorns
have a common life, as three spools have not. Moderate realism is
true of organic things; nominalism is true only of proper names.
God has not created any new tree nature since he created the first
tree; nor has he created any new human nature since he created the
first man. I am but a branch and outgrowth of the tree of
humanity.

Our realism then only asserts the real historical connection of
each member of the race with its first father and head, and such a
derivation of each from him as makes us partakers of the character
which he formed. Adam was once the race; and when he fell, the
race fell. Shedd: “We all existed in Adam in our elementary
invisible substance. The _Seyn_ of all was there, though the
_Daseyn_ was not; the _noumenon_, though not the _phenomenon_, was
in existence.” On realism, see Koehler, Realismus und
Nominalismus; Neander, Ch. Hist., 4:356; Dorner, Person Christ,
2:377; Hase, Anselm, 2:77; F. E. Abbott, Scientific Theism,
Introd., 1-29, and in Mind, Oct. 1882:476, 477; Raymond, Theology,
2:30-33; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:69-74; Bowne, Theory of Thought
and Knowledge, 129-132; Ten Broeke, in Baptist Quar. Rev., Jan.
1892:1-26; Baldwin, Psychology, 280, 281; D. J. Hill, Genetic
Philosophy, 186; Hours with the Mystics, 1:213; Case, Physical
Realism, 17-19; Fullerton, Sameness and Identity, 88, 89, and
Concept of the Infinite, 95-114.

The new conceptions of the reign of law and of the principle of
heredity which prevail in modern science are working to the
advantage of Christian theology. The doctrine of Adam’s Natural
Headship is only a doctrine of the hereditary transmission of
character from the first father of the race to his descendants.
Hence we use the word “imputation” in its proper sense—that of a
reckoning or charging to us of that which is truly and properly
ours. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:259-357, esp. 328—“The
problem is: We must allow that the depravity, which all Adam’s
descendants inherit by natural generation, nevertheless involves
personal guilt; and yet this depravity, so far as it is natural,
wants the very conditions on which guilt depends. The only
satisfactory explanation of this difficulty is the Christian
doctrine of original sin. Here alone, if its inner possibility can
be maintained, can the apparently contradictory principles be
harmonized, viz.: the universal and deep-seated depravity of human
nature, as the source of actual sin, and individual responsibility
and guilt.” These words, though written by one who advocates a
different theory, are nevertheless a valuable argument in
corroboration of the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

Thornwell, Theology, 1:343—“We must contradict every Scripture
text and every Scripture doctrine which makes hereditary impurity
hateful to God and punishable in his sight, or we must maintain
that we sinned in Adam in his first transgression.” Secretan, in
his Work on Liberty, held to a _collective_ life of the race in
Adam. He was answered by Naville, Problem of Evil: “We existed in
Adam, not individually, but seminally. Each of us, as an
individual, is responsible only for his personal acts, or, to
speak more exactly, for the personal part of his acts. But each of
us, as he is man, is jointly and severally (_solidairement_)
responsible for the fall of the human race.” Bersier, The Oneness
of the Race, in its Fall and in its Future: “If we are commanded
to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is because our neighbor is
ourself.”

See Edwards, Original Sin, part 4, chap. 3; Shedd, on Original
Sin, in Discourses and Essays, 218-271, and references, 261-263,
also Dogm. Theol., 2:181-195; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 410-435,
451-460, 494; Schaff, in Bib. Sac., 5:220, and in Lange’s Com., on
Rom. 5:12; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 175-180; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 3:28-38, 204-236; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 1:269-400; Martensen, Dogmatics, 173-183; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 262 _sq._, _cf._ 101; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 135;
Bp. Reynolds, Sinfulness of Sin, in Works, 1:102-350; Mozley on
Original Sin, in Lectures, 136-152; Kendall, on Natural Heirship,
or All the World Akin, in Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1885:614-626.
_Per contra_, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:157-164, 227-257; Haven,
in Bib. Sac., 20:451-455; Criticism of Baird’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1880:335-376; of Schaff’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1870:239-262.

We regard this theory of the Natural Headship of Adam as the most
satisfactory of the theories mentioned, and as furnishing the most
important help towards the understanding of the great problem of original
sin. In its favor may be urged the following considerations:

A. It puts the most natural interpretation upon Rom. 5:12-21. In verse 12
of this passage—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned”—the great
majority of commentators regard the word “sinned” as describing a common
transgression of the race in Adam. The death spoken of is, as the whole
context shows, mainly though not exclusively physical. It has passed upon
all—even upon those who have committed no conscious and personal
transgression whereby to explain its infliction (verse 14). The legal
phraseology of the passage shows that this infliction is not a matter of
sovereign decree, but of judicial penalty (verses 13, 14, 15, 16,
18—“law,” “transgression,” “trespass,” “judgment ... of one unto
condemnation,” “act of righteousness,” “justification”). As the
explanation of this universal subjection to penalty, we are referred to
Adam’s sin. By that one act (“so,” verse 12)—the “trespass of the one” man
(v. 15, 17), the “one trespass” (v. 18)—death came to all men, because all
[not “have sinned”, but] sinned (πάντες ἥμαρτον—aorist of instantaneous
past action)—that is, all sinned in “the one trespass” of “the one” man.
Compare 1 Cor. 15:22—“As in Adam all die”—where the contrast with physical
resurrection shows that physical death is meant; 2 Cor. 5:14—“one died for
all, therefore all died.” See Commentaries of Meyer, Bengel, Olshausen,
Philippi, Wordsworth, Lange, Godet, Shedd. This is also recognized as the
correct interpretation of Paul’s words by Beyschlag, Ritschl, and
Pfleiderer, although no one of these three accepts Paul’s doctrine as
authoritative.

Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:58-60—“To understand the apostle’s
view, we must follow the exposition of Bengel (which is favored
also by Meyer and Pfleiderer): ‘_Because they_—viz., in Adam—_all
have sinned_’; they all, namely, who were included in Adam
according to the O. T. view which sees the whole race to its
founder, acted in his action.” Ritschl: “Certainly Paul treated
the universal destiny of death as due to the sin of Adam.
Nevertheless it is not yet suited for a theological rule just for
the reason that the apostle has formed this idea;” in other words,
Paul’s teaching it does not make it binding upon our faith.
Philippi, Com. on Rom., 168—Interpret _Rom. 5:12_—“_one sinned for
all, therefore all sinned_,” by _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_one died for all,
therefore all died._” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:294—“_by the
trespass of the one the many died_,” “_by the trespass of the one,
death reigned __ through the one_,” “_through the one man’s
disobedience_”—all these phrases, and the phrases with respect to
salvation which correspond to them, indicate that the fallen race
and the redeemed race are each regarded as a multitude, a
totality. So οἱ πάντεσ in 2 Cor. 5:14 indicates a corresponding
conception of the organic unity of the race.

Prof. George B. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 32-40, 129-139, denies
that Paul taught the sinning of all men in Adam: “They sinned in
the same sense in which believers were crucified to the world and
died unto sin when Christ died upon the cross. The believer’s
renewal is conceived as wrought in advance by those acts and
experiences of Christ in which it has its ground. As the
consequences of his vicarious sufferings are traced back to their
cause, so are the consequences which flowed from the beginning of
sin in Adam traced back to that original fount of evil and
identified with it; but the latter statement should no more be
treated as a rigid logical formula than the former, its
counterpart.... There is a mystical identification of the
procuring cause with its effect,—both in the case of Adam and of
Christ.”

In our treatment of the New School theory of sin we have pointed
out that the inability to understand the vital union of the
believer with Christ incapacitates the New School theologian from
understanding the organic union of the race with Adam. Paul’s
phrase “_in Christ_” meant more than that Christ is the type and
beginner of salvation, and sinning in Adam meant more to Paul than
following the example or acting in the spirit of our first father.
In _2 Cor. 5:14_ the argument is that since Christ died, all
believers died to sin and death in him. Their resurrection-life is
the same life that died and rose again in his death and
resurrection. So Adam’s sin is ours because the same life which
transgressed and became corrupt in him has come down to us and is
our possession. In _Rom. 5:14_, the individual and conscious sins
to which the New School theory attaches the condemning sentence
are expressly excluded, and in _verses 15-19_ the judgment is
declared to be “_of one trespass_.” Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, of
Rochester, says well: “Paul teaches that Adam’s sin is ours, not
potentially, but actually.” Of ἥμαρτον, he says: “This might
conceivably be: (1) the historical aorist proper, used in its
momentary sense; (2) the comprehensive or collective aorist, as in
διῆλθεν in the same verse; (3) the aorist used in the sense of the
English perfect, as in _Rom. 3:23_—πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ
ὑστεροῦνται. In _5:12_, the context determines with great
probability that the aorist is used in the first of these senses.”
We may add that interpreters are not wanting who so take ἥμαρτον
in _3:23_; see also margin of Rev. Version. But since the passage
_Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we reserve to the close of this
section a treatment of it in greater detail.

B. It permits whatever of truth there may be in the Federal theory and in
the theory of Mediate Imputation to be combined with it, while neither of
these latter theories can be justified to reason unless they are regarded
as corollaries or accessories of the truth of Adam’s Natural Headship.
Only on this supposition of Natural Headship could God justly constitute
Adam our representative, or hold us responsible for the depraved nature we
have received from him. It moreover justifies God’s ways, in postulating a
real and a fair probation of our common nature as preliminary to
imputation of sin—a truth which the theories just mentioned, in common
with that of the New School, virtually deny,—while it rests upon correct
philosophical principles with regard to will, ability, law, and accepts
the Scriptural representations of the nature of sin, the penal character
of death, the origin of the soul, and the oneness of the race in the
transgression.

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196-232, favors the
view that sin consists simply in an inherited bias of our nature
to evil, and that we are guilty from birth because we are sinful
from birth. But he recognizes in Augustinianism the truth of the
organic unity of the race and the implication of every member in
its past history. He tells us that we must not regard man simply
as an abstract or isolated individual. The atomistic theory
regards society as having no existence other than that of the
individuals who compose it. But it is nearer the truth to say that
it is society which creates the individual, rather than that the
individual creates society. Man does not come into existence a
blank tablet on which external agencies may write whatever record
they will. The individual is steeped in influences which are due
to the past history of his kind. The individualistic theory runs
counter to the most obvious facts of observation and experience.
As a philosophy of life, Augustinianism has a depth and
significance which the individualistic theory cannot claim.

Alvah Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 175 (2d ed.)—“Every
child of Adam is accountable for the degree of sympathy which he
has for the whole system of evil in the world, and with the primal
act of disobedience among men. If that sympathy is full, whether
expressed by deed or thought, if the whole force of his being is
arrayed against heaven and on the side of hell, it is difficult to
limit his responsibility.” Schleiermacher held that the guilt of
original sin attached, not to the individual as an individual, but
as a member of the race, so that the consciousness of race-union
carried with it the consciousness of race-guilt. He held all men
to be equally sinful and to differ only in their different
reception of or attitude toward grace, sin being the universal
_malum metaphysicum_ of Spinoza; see Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit
Kant, 113.

C. While its fundamental presupposition—a determination of the will of
each member of the race prior to his individual consciousness—is an
hypothesis difficult in itself, it is an hypothesis which furnishes the
key to many more difficulties than it suggests. Once allow that the race
was one in its first ancestor and fell in him, and light is thrown on a
problem otherwise insoluble—the problem of our accountability for a sinful
nature which we have not personally and consciously originated. Since we
cannot, with the three theories first mentioned, deny either of the terms
of this problem—inborn depravity or accountability for it,—we accept this
solution as the best attainable.

Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 20—“The whole swing of
the pendulum of thought of to-day is away from the individual and
towards the social point of view. Theories of society are
supplementing theories of the individual. The solidarity of man is
the regnant thought in both the scientific and the historical
study of man. It is even running into the extreme of a determinism
that annihilates the individual.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the
Present Age, 43—“It was never less possible to deny the truth to
which theology gives expression in its doctrine of original sin
than in the present age. It is only one form of the universally
recognized fact of heredity. There is a collective evil, for which
the responsibility rests on the whole race of man. Of this common
evil each man inherits his share; it is organized in his nature;
it is established in his environment.” E. G. Robinson: “The
tendency of modern theology [in the last generation] was to
individualization, to make each man ‘a little Almighty.’ But the
human race is one in kind, and in a sense is numerically one. The
race lay potentially in Adam. The entire developing force of the
race was in him. There is no carrying the race up, except from the
starting-point of a fallen and guilty humanity.” Goethe said that
while humanity ever advances, individual man remains the same.

The true test of a theory is, not that it can itself be explained,
but that it is capable of explaining. The atomic theory in
chemistry, the theory of the ether in physics, the theory of
gravitation, the theory of evolution, are all in themselves
indemonstrable hypotheses, provisionally accepted simply because,
if granted, they unify great aggregations of facts. Coleridge said
that original sin is the one mystery that makes all other things
clear. In this mystery, however, there is nothing
self-contradictory or arbitrary. Gladden, What is Left?
131—“Heredity is God working in us, and environment is God working
around us.” Whether we adopt the theory of Augustine or not, the
facts of universal moral obliquity and universal human suffering
confront us. We are compelled to reconcile these facts with our
faith in the righteousness and goodness of God. Augustine gives us
a unifying principle which, better than any other, explains these
facts and justifies them. On the solidarity of the race, see
Bruce, The Providential Order, 280-310, and art. on Sin, by
Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.

D. This theory finds support in the conclusions of modern science: with
regard to the moral law, as requiring right states as well as right acts;
with regard to the human will, as including subconscious and unconscious
bent and determination; with regard to heredity, and the transmission of
evil character; with regard to the unity and solidarity of the human race.
The Augustinian theory may therefore be called an ethical or theological
interpretation of certain incontestable and acknowledged biological facts.

Ribot, Heredity, 1—“Heredity is that biological law by which all
beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their
descendants; it is for the species what personal identity is for
the individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid
incessant variations. By it nature ever copies and imitates
herself.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 202-218—“In man’s
moral condition we find arrested development; reversion to a
savage type; hypocritical and self-protective mimicry of virtue;
parasitism; physical and moral abnormality; deep-seated perversion
of faculty.” Simon, Reconciliation, 154 sq.—“The organism was
affected before the individuals which are its successive
differentiations and products were affected.... Humanity as an
organism received an injury from sin. It received that injury at
the very beginning.... At the moment when the seed began to
germinate disease entered and it was smitten with death on account
of sin.”

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 134—“A general notion has
no actual or possible metaphysical existence. All real existence
is necessarily singular and individual. The only way to give the
notion any metaphysical significance is to turn it into a law
inherent in reality, and this attempt will fail unless we finally
conceive this law as a rule according to which a basal
intelligence proceeds in positing individuals.” Sheldon, in the
Methodist Review, March, 1901:214-227, applies this explanation to
the doctrine of original sin. Men have a common nature, he says,
only in the sense that they are resembling personalities. If we
literally died in Adam, we also literally died in Christ. There is
no all-inclusive Christ, any more than there is an all-inclusive
Adam. We regard this argument as proving the precise opposite of
its intended conclusion. There is an all-inclusive Christ, and the
fundamental error of most of those who oppose Augustinianism is
that they misconceive the union of the believer with Christ. “A
basal intelligence” here “posits individuals.” And so with the
relation of men to Adam. Here too there is “a law inherent in
reality”—the regular working of the divine will, according to
which like produces like, and a sinful germ reproduces itself.

E. We are to remember, however, that while this theory of the method of
our union with Adam is merely a valuable hypothesis, the problem which it
seeks to explain is, in both its terms, presented to us both by conscience
and by Scripture. In connection with this problem a central fact is
announced in Scripture, which we feel compelled to believe upon divine
testimony, even though every attempted explanation should prove
unsatisfactory. That central fact, which constitutes the substance of the
Scripture doctrine of original sin, is simply this: that the sin of Adam
is the immediate cause and ground of inborn depravity, guilt and
condemnation to the whole human race.

Three things must be received on Scripture testimony: (1) inborn
depravity; (2) guilt and condemnation therefor; (3) Adam’s sin the
cause and ground of both. From these three positions of Scripture
it seems not only natural, but inevitable, to draw the inference
that we “_all sinned_” in Adam. The Augustinian theory simply puts
in a link of connection between two sets of facts which otherwise
would be difficult to reconcile. But, in putting in that link of
connection, it claims that it is merely bringing out into clear
light an underlying but implicit assumption of Paul’s reasoning,
and this it seeks to prove by showing that upon no other
assumption can Paul’s reasoning be understood at all. Since the
passage in _Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we proceed to examine
it in greater detail. Our treatment is mainly a reproduction of
the substance of Shedd’s Commentary, although we have combined
with it remarks from Meyer, Schaff, Moule, and others.

_Exposition of Rom. 5:12-19._—_Parallel between the salvation in
Christ and the ruin that has come through Adam_, in each case
through no personal act of our own, neither by our earning
salvation in the case of the life received through Christ, nor by
our individually sinning in the case of the death received through
Adam. The statement of the parallel is begun in

_Verse 12_: “_as through one man sin entered into the world, and
death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all
sinned,_” so (as we may complete the interrupted sentence) by one
man righteousness entered into the world, and life by
righteousness, and so life passed upon all men, because all became
partakers of this righteousness. Both physical and spiritual death
is meant. That it is physical is shown (1) from _verse 14_; (2)
from the allusion to _Gen. 3:19_; (3) from the universal Jewish
and Christian assumption that physical death was the result of
Adam’s sin. See Wisdom 2:23, 24; Sirach 25:24; 2 Esdras 3:7, 21;
7:11, 46, 48, 118; 9:19; _John 8:44_; _1 Cor. 15:21_. That it is
spiritual, is evident from _Rom. 5:18, 21_, where ζωή is the
opposite of θάνατος, and from _2 Tim. 1:10_, where the same
contrast occurs. The οὔτος in _verse 12_ shows the mode in which
historically death has come to all, namely, that the _one_ sinned,
and thereby brought death to all; in other words, death is the
effect, of which the sin of the one is the cause. By Adam’s act,
physical and spiritual death passed upon all men, because all
sinned. ἐφ᾽ ᾦ = because, on the ground of the fact that, for the
reason that, all sinned. πάντες = all, without exception, infants
included, as _verse 14_ teaches.

Ἥμαρτον mentions the particular reason why all men died, _viz._,
because all men sinned. It is the aorist of momentary past
action—sinned when, through the one, sin entered into the world.
It is as much as to say, “because, when Adam sinned, all men
sinned in and with him.” This is proved by the succeeding
explanatory context (_verses 15-19_), in which it is reiterated
five times in succession that one and only one sin is the cause of
the death that befalls all men. Compare _1 Cor. 15:22_. The senses
“all were sinful,” “all became sinful,” are inadmissible, for
ἁμαρτάνειν is not ἁμαρτωλὸν γίγνεσθαι or εἶναι. The sense “death
passed upon all men, because all have consciously and personally
sinned,” is contradicted (1) by _verse 14_, in which it is
asserted that certain persons who are a part of πάντες, the
subject of ἥμαρτον, and who suffer the death which is the penalty
of sin, did not commit sins resembling Adam’s first sin, _i. e._,
individual and conscious transgressions; and (2) by _verses
15-19_, in which it is asserted repeatedly that only one sin, and
not millions of transgressions, is the cause of the death of all
men. This sense would seem to require ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν.
Neither can ἥμαρτον have the sense “were accounted and treated as
sinners”; for (1) there is no other instance in Scripture where
this active verb has a passive signification; and (2) the passive
makes ἥμαρτον to denote God’s action, and not man’s. This would
not furnish the justification of the infliction of death, which
Paul is seeking,

_Verse 13_ begins a demonstration of the proposition, in _Verse
12_, that death comes to all, because all men sinned the one sin
of the one man. The argument is as follows: Before the law sin
existed; for there was death, the penalty of sin. But this sin was
not sin committed against the _Mosaic_ law, because that law was
not yet in existence. The death in the world prior to that law
proves that there must have been some other law, against which sin
had been committed.

_Verse 14_. Nor could it have been personal and conscious
violation of an _unwritten_ law, for which death was inflicted;
for death passed upon multitudes, such as infants and idiots, who
did not sin in their own persons, as Adam did, by violating some
known commandment. Infants are not specifically named here,
because the intention is to include others who, though mature in
years, have not reached moral consciousness. But since death is
everywhere and always the penalty of sin, the death of all must
have been the penalty of the common sin of the race, when πάντες
ἥμαρτον in Adam. The law which they violated was the Eden statute,
_Gen. 2:17_. The relation between their sin and Adam’s is not that
of _resemblance_, but of _identity_. Had the sin by which death
came upon them been one _like_ Adam’s, there would have been as
many sins, to be the cause of death and to account for it, as
there were individuals. Death would have come into the world
through millions of men, and not “_through one man_” (_verse 12_),
and judgment would have come upon all men to condemnation through
millions of trespasses, and not “_through one trespass_” (_v.
18_). The object, then, of the parenthetical digression in _verses
13_ and _14_ is to prevent the reader from supposing, from the
statement that “all men sinned,” that the individual
transgressions of all men are meant, and to make it clear that
only the one first sin of the one first man is intended. Those who
died before Moses must have violated some law. The Mosaic law, and
the law of conscience, have been ruled out of the case. These
persons must, therefore, have sinned against the commandment in
Eden, the probationary statute; and their sin was not _similar_
(ὁμοίος) to Adam’s, but Adam’s _identical_ sin, the very same sin
numerically of the “_one man_.” They did not, in their own persons
and consciously, sin as Adam did; yet in Adam, and in the nature
common to him and them, they sinned and fell (_versus_ Current
Discussions in Theology, 5:277, 278). They did not sin _like_
Adam, but they “sinned _in_ him, and fell _with_ him, in that
first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism, 22).

_Verses 15-17_ show how the work of grace differs from, and
surpasses, the work of sin. Over against God’s exact justice in
punishing all for the first sin which all committed in Adam, is
set the gratuitous justification of all who are in Christ. Adam’s
sin is the act of Adam and his posterity together; hence the
imputation to the posterity is just, and merited. Christ’s
obedience is the work of Christ alone; hence the imputation of it
to the elect is gracious and unmerited. Here τοὺς πολλούς is not
of equal extent with οἱ πολλοί in the first clause, because other
passages teach that “the many” who die in Adam are not
conterminous with “_the many_” who live in Christ; see _1 Cor.
15:22_; _Mat. 25:46_; also, see note on _verse 18_, below. Τοὺς
πολλούς here refers to the same persons who, in _verse 17_, are
said to “_receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.” _Verse 16_ notices a numerical difference between
the condemnation and the justification. Condemnation results from
_one_ offense; justification delivers from _many_ offences. _Verse
17_ enforces and explains _verse 16_. If the union with Adam in
his sin was certain to bring destruction, the union with Christ in
his righteousness is yet more certain to bring salvation.

_Verse 18_ resumes the parallel between Adam and Christ which was
commenced in _verse 12_, but was interrupted by the explanatory
parenthesis in _verses 13-17_. “_As through one trespass ... unto
all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness
... unto all men unto justification of_ [necessary to] _life_.”
Here the “_all men to condemnation_”—the οἱ πολλοί in _verse 15_;
and the “_all men unto justification of life_”—the τοὺς πολλούς in
_verse 15_. There is a totality in each case; but, in the former
case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their physical life from
Adam,—in the latter case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their
spiritual life from Christ (compare _1 Cor. 15:22_—“_For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”—in which
last clause Paul is speaking, as the context shows, not of the
resurrection of all men, both saints and sinners, but only of the
blessed resurrection of the righteous; in other words, of the
resurrection of those who are one with Christ).

_Verse 19._ “_For as through the one man’s disobedience the many
were constituted sinners, even so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be constituted righteous._” The many were
constituted sinners because, according to _verse 12_, they sinned
in and with Adam in his fall. The verb presupposes the fact of
natural union between those to whom it relates. All men are
declared to be sinners on the ground of that “_one trespass_,”
because, when that one trespass was committed, all men were one
man—that is, were one common nature in the first human pair. Sin
is imputed, because it is committed. All men are punished with
death, because they literally sinned in Adam, and not because they
are metaphorically reputed to have done so, but in fact did not.
Οἱ πολλοί is used in contrast with the one forefather, and the
atonement of Christ is designated as ὑπακοή, in order to contrast
it with the παρακοή of Adam.

Κατασταθήσονται has the same signification as in the first part of
the verse. Δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται means simply “shall be
justified,” and is used instead of δικαιωθήσονται, in order to
make the antithesis of ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν more perfect. This
being “_constituted righteous_” presupposes the fact of a union
between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between Christ and
believers, just as the being “_constituted sinners_” presupposed
the fact of a union between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between
all men and Adam. The future κατασταθήσονται refers to the
succession of believers; the _justification_ of all was, ideally,
complete already, but actually, it would await the times of
individual believing. “_The many_” who shall be “_constituted
righteous_”—not all mankind, but only “_the many_” to whom, in
_verse 15_, grace abounded, and who are described, in _verse 17_,
as “_they that receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.”

“But this union differs in several important particulars from that
between Adam and his posterity. It is not natural and substantial,
but moral and spiritual; not generic and universal, but individual
and by election; not caused by the creative act of God, but by his
regenerating act. All men, without exception, are one with Adam;
only believing men are one with Christ. The imputation of Adam’s
sin is not an arbitrary act in the sense that, if God so pleased,
he could reckon it to the account of any beings in the universe,
by a volition. The sin of Adam could not be imputed to the fallen
angels, for example, and punished in them, because they never were
one with Adam by unity of substance and nature. The fact that they
have committed actual transgression of their own will not justify
the imputation of Adam’s sin to them, any more than the fact that
the posterity of Adam have committed actual transgressions of
their own would be a sufficient reason for imputing the first sin
of Adam to them. Nothing but a real union of nature and being can
justify the imputation of Adam’s sin; and, similarly, the
obedience of Christ could no more be imputed to an unbelieving man
than to a lost angel, because neither of these is morally and
spiritually one with Christ” (Shedd). For a different
interpretation (ἡμαρτον—sinned personally and individually), see
Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., 1885:48-72.

No Condemnation Inherited.

Pelagian. Arminian. New School.

I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate
the soul. Creation. creation. creation.
II. Man’s state Innocent, and Depraved, but Depraved and
at birth. able to obey still able to vicious, but
God. co-operate with this not sin.
the Spirit.
III. Effects of Only upon To corrupt his To communicate
Adam’s sin. himself. posterity visiosity to the
physically and whole race.
intellectually.
No guilt of
Adam’s sin
imputed.
IV. How did all By following By consciously By voluntary
sin? Adam’s example. ratifying Adam’s transgression of
own deed, in known law.
spite of the
Spirit’s aid.
V. What is Only of evil Evil tendencies Uncondemnable,
corruption? habit, in each kept in spite of but evil
case. the Spirit. tendencies.
VI. What is Every man’s own Only man’s own Man’s individual
imputed? sins. sins and acts of
ratifying of transgression.
this nature.
VII. What is Spiritual and Physical and Spiritual and
the death eternal. spiritual death eternal death
incurred? by decree. only.
VIII. How are By following By co-operating By accepting
men saved? Christ’s with the Spirit Christ under
example. given to all. influence of
truth presented
by the Spirit.

Condemnation Inherited.

Federal. Placean. Augustinian.

I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate
the soul. creation. creation. creation.
II. Man’s state Depraved, Depraved, Depraved,
at birth. unable, and unable, and unable, and
condemnable. condemnable. condemnable.
III. Effects of To insure Natural Guilt of Adam’s
Adam’s sin. condemnation of connection of sin, corruption,
his fellows in depravity in all and death.
covenant, and his descendants.
their creation
as depraved.
IV. How did all By being By possessing a By having part
sin? accounted depraved nature. in the sin of
sinners in Adam, as seminal
Adam’s sin. head of the
race.
V. What is Condemnable, Condemnable, Condemnable,
corruption? evil disposition evil disposition evil disposition
and state. and state. and state.
VI. What is Adam’s sin, Only depraved Adam’s sin, our
imputed? man’s own nature and man’s depravity, and
corruption, and own sin. our own sins.
man’s own sins.
VII. What is Physical, Physical, Physical,
the death spiritual, and spiritual, and spiritual, and
incurred? eternal. eternal. eternal.
VIII. How are By being By becoming By Christ’s
men saved? accounted possessors of a work, with whom
righteous new nature in we are one.
through the act Christ.
of Christ.

II.—Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine of Imputation.

The doctrine of Imputation, to which we have thus arrived, is met by its
opponents with the following objections. In discussing them, we are to
remember that a truth revealed in Scripture may have claims to our belief,
in spite of difficulties to us insoluble. Yet it is hoped that examination
will show the objections in question to rest either upon false
philosophical principles or upon misconception of the doctrine assailed.

A. That there can be no sin apart from and prior to consciousness.

This we deny. The larger part of men’s evil dispositions and acts are
imperfectly conscious, and of many such dispositions and acts the evil
quality is not discerned at all. The objection rests upon the assumption
that law is confined to published statutes or to standards formally
recognized by its subjects. A profounder view of law as identical with the
constituent principles of being, as binding the nature to conformity with
the nature of God, as demanding right volitions only because these are
manifestations of a right state, as having claims upon men in their
corporate capacity, deprives this objection of all its force.

If our aim is to find a conscious act of transgression upon which
to base God’s charge of guilt and man’s condemnation, we can find
this more easily in Adam’s sin than at the beginning of each man’s
personal history; for no human being can remember his first sin.
The main question at issue is therefore this: Is all sin personal?
We claim that both Scripture and reason answer this question in
the negative. There is such a thing as race-sin and
race-responsibility.

B. That man cannot be responsible for a sinful nature which he did not
personally originate.

We reply that the objection ignores the testimony of conscience and of
Scripture. These assert that we are responsible for what we are. The
sinful nature is not something external to us, but is our inmost selves.
If man’s original righteousness and the new affection implanted in
regeneration have moral character, then the inborn tendency to evil has
moral character; as the former are commendable, so the latter is
condemnable.

If it be said that sin is the act of a person, and not of a
nature, we reply that in Adam the whole human nature once
subsisted in the form of a single personality, and the act of the
person could be at the same time the act of the nature. That which
could not be at any subsequent point of time, could be and was, at
that time. Human nature could fall _in Adam_, though that fall
could not be repeated in the case of any one of his descendants.
Hovey, Outlines, 129—“Shall we say that _will_ is the cause of sin
in holy beings, while _wrong desire_ is the cause of sin in unholy
beings? Augustine held this.” Pepper, Outlines, 112—“We do not
fall each one by himself. We were so on probation in Adam, that
his fall was our fall.”

C. That Adam’s sin cannot be imputed to us, since we cannot repent of it.

The objection has plausibility only so long as we fail to distinguish
between Adam’s sin as the inward apostasy of the nature from God, and
Adam’s sin as the outward act of transgression which followed and
manifested that apostasy. We cannot indeed repent of Adam’s sin as our
personal act or as Adam’s personal act, but regarding his sin as the
apostasy of our common nature—an apostasy which manifests itself in our
personal transgressions as it did in his, we can repent of it and do
repent of it. In truth it is this nature, as self-corrupted and averse to
God, for which the Christian most deeply repents.

God, we know, has not made our nature as we find it. We are
conscious of our depravity and apostasy from God. We know that God
cannot be responsible for this; we know that our nature is
responsible. But this it could not be, unless its corruption were
self-corruption. For this self-corrupted nature we should repent,
and do repent. Anselm, De Concep. Virg., 23—“Adam sinned in one
point of view as a person, in another as man (_i. e._, as human
nature which at that time existed in him alone). But since Adam
and humanity could not be separated, the sin of the person
necessarily affected the _nature_. This nature is what Adam
transmitted to his posterity, and transmitted it such as his sin
had made it, burdened with a debt which it could not pay, robbed
of the righteousness with which God had originally invested it;
and in every one of his descendants this impaired nature makes the
_persons_ sinners. Yet not in the same degree sinners as Adam was,
for the latter sinned both as human nature and as a person, while
new-born infants sin only as they possess the nature.”—more
briefly, in Adam a person made nature sinful; in his posterity,
nature makes persons sinful.

D. That, if we be responsible for Adam’s first sin, we must also be
responsible not only for every other sin of Adam, but for the sins of our
immediate ancestors.

We reply that the apostasy of human nature could occur but once. It
occurred in Adam before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and revealed
itself in that eating. The subsequent sins of Adam and of our immediate
ancestors are no longer acts which determine or change the nature,—they
only show what the nature is. Here is the truth and the limitation of the
Scripture declaration that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father” (Ez. 18:20; _cf._ Luke 13:2, 3; John 9:2, 3). Man is not
responsible for the specifically evil tendencies communicated to him from
his immediate ancestors, as distinct from the nature he possesses; nor is
he responsible for the sins of those ancestors which originated these
tendencies. But he is responsible for that original apostasy which
constituted the one and final revolt of the race from God, and for the
personal depravity and disobedience which in his own case has resulted
therefrom.

Augustine, Encheiridion, 46, 47, leans toward an imputing of the
sins of immediate ancestors, but intimates that, as a matter of
grace, this may be limited to “_the third and fourth generation_”
(_Ex. 20:5_). Aquinas thinks this last is said by God, because
fathers live to see the third and fourth generation of their
descendants, and influence them by their example to become
voluntarily like themselves. Burgesse, Original Sin, 397, adds the
covenant-idea to that of natural generation, in order to prevent
imputation of the sins of immediate ancestors as well as those of
Adam. So also Shedd. But Baird, Elohim Revealed, 508, gives a
better explanation, when he distinguishes between the first sin of
nature when it apostatized, and those subsequent personal actions
which merely manifest the nature but do not change it. Imagine
Adam to have remained innocent, but one of his posterity to have
fallen. Then the descendants of that one would have been guilty
for the change of nature in him, but not guilty for the sins of
ancestors intervening between him and them.

We add that man may direct the course of a lava-stream, already
flowing downward, into some particular channel, and may even dig a
new channel for it down the mountain. But the stream is constant
in its quantity and quality, and is under the same influence of
gravitation in all stages of its progress. I am responsible for
the downward tendency which my nature gave itself at the
beginning; but I am not responsible for inherited and specifically
evil tendencies as something apart from the nature,—for they are
not apart from it,—they are forms or manifestations of it. These
tendencies run out after a time,—not so with sin of nature. The
declaration of Ezekiel (_18:20_), “_the son shall not bear the
iniquity of the father,_” like Christ’s denial that blindness was
due to the blind man’s individual sins or those of his parents
(_John 9:2, 3_), simply shows that God does not impute to us the
sins of our immediate ancestors; it is not inconsistent with the
doctrine that all the physical and moral evil of the world is the
result of a sin of Adam with which the whole race is chargeable.

Peculiar tendencies to avarice or sensuality inherited from one’s
immediate ancestry are merely wrinkles in native depravity which
add nothing to its amount or its guilt. Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:88-94—“To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary
trait.” H. B. Smith, System, 296—“Ezekiel 18 does not deny that
descendants are involved in the evil results of ancestral sins,
under God’s moral government; but simply shows that there is
opportunity for extrication, in personal repentance and
obedience.” Mozley on Predestination, 179—“Augustine says that
Ezekiel’s declarations that the son shall not bear the iniquity of
the father are not a universal law of the divine dealings, but
only a special prophetical one, as alluding to the divine mercy
under the gospel dispensation and the covenant of grace, under
which the effect of original sin and the punishment of mankind for
the sin of their first parent was removed.” See also Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:31 (Syst. Doct., 2:326, 327), where God’s
visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children (Ex. 20:5) is
explained by the fact that the children repeat the sins of the
parents. German proverb: “The apple does not fall far from the
tree.”

E. That if Adam’s sin and condemnation can be ours by propagation, the
righteousness and faith of the believer should be propagable also.

We reply that no merely personal qualities, whether of sin or
righteousness, are communicated by propagation. Ordinary generation does
not transmit _personal_ guilt, but only that guilt which belongs to the
whole _species_. So personal faith and righteousness are not propagable.
“Original sin is the consequent of man’s _nature_, whereas the parents’
grace is a _personal_ excellence, and cannot be transmitted” (Burgesse).

Thornwell, Selected Writings, 1:543, says the Augustinian doctrine
would imply that Adam, penitent and believing, must have begotten
penitent and believing children, seeing that the nature as it is
in the parent always flows from parent to child. But see Fisher,
Discussions, 370, where Aquinas holds that no quality or guilt
that is _personal_ is propagated (Thomas Aquinas, 2:629). Anselm
(De Concept. Virg. et Origin. Peccato, 98) will not decide the
question. “The original nature of the tree is propagated—not the
nature of the graft”—when seed from the graft is planted.
Burgesse: “Learned parents do not convey learning to their
children, but they are born in ignorance as others.” Augustine: “A
Jew that was circumcised begat children not circumcised, but
uncircumcised; and the seed that was sown without husks, yet
produced corn with husks.”

The recent modification of Darwinism by Weismann has confirmed the
doctrine of the text. Lamarck’s view was that development of each
race has taken place through the _effort_ of the individuals,—the
giraffe has a long neck because successive giraffes have reached
for food on high trees. Darwin held that development has taken
place not because of effort, but because of _environment_, which
kills the unfit and permits the fit to survive,—the giraffe has a
long neck because among the children of giraffes only the
long-necked ones could reach the fruit, and of successive
generations of giraffes only the long-necked ones lived to
propagate. But Weismann now tells us that even then there would be
no development unless there were a spontaneous _innate tendency_
in giraffes to become long-necked,—nothing is of avail after the
giraffe is born; all depends upon the germs in the parents. Darwin
held to the transmission of acquired characters, so that
individual men are _affluents_ of the stream of humanity; Weismann
holds, on the contrary, that acquired characters are not
transmitted, and that individual men are only _effluents_ of the
stream of humanity: the stream gives its characteristics to the
individuals, but the individuals do not give their characteristics
to the stream: see Howard Ernest Cushman, in The Outlook, Jan. 10,
1897.

Weismann, Heredity, 2:14, 266-270, 482—“Characters only acquired
by the operation of external circumstances, acting during the life
of the individual, cannot be transmitted.... The loss of a finger
is not inherited; increase of an organ by exercise is a purely
personal acquirement and is not transmitted; no child of reading
parents ever read without being taught; children do not even learn
to speak untaught.” Horses with docked tails, Chinese women with
cramped feet, do not transmit their peculiarities. The rupture of
the hymen in women is not transmitted. Weismann cut off the tails
of 66 white mice in five successive generations, but of 901
offspring none were tailless. G. J. Romanes, Life and Letters,
300—“Three additional cases of cats which have lost their tails
having tailless kittens afterwards.” In his Weismannism, Romanes
writes: “The truly scientific attitude of mind with regard to the
problem of heredity is to say with Galton: ‘We might almost
reserve our belief that the structural cells can react on the
sexual elements at all, and we may be confident that at most they
do so in a very faint degree; in other words, that acquired
modifications are barely if at all _inherited_, in the correct
sense of that word.’ ” This seems to class both Romanes and Galton
on the side of Weismann in the controversy. Burbank, however, says
that “acquired characters are transmitted, or I know nothing of
plant life.”

A. H. Bradford, Heredity, 19, 20, illustrates the opposing views:
“Human life is not a clear stream flowing from the mountains,
receiving in its varied course something from a thousand rills and
rivulets on the surface and in the soil, so that it is no longer
pure as at the first. To this view of Darwin and Spencer, Weismann
and Haeckel oppose the view that human life is rather a stream
flowing underground from the mountains to the sea, and rising now
and then in fountains, some of which are saline, some sulphuric,
and some tinctured with iron; and that the differences are due
entirely to the soil passed through in breaking forth to the
surface, the mother-stream down and beneath all the salt, sulphur
and iron, flowing on toward the sea substantially unchanged. If
Darwin is correct, then we must change individuals in order to
change their posterity. If Weismann is correct, then we must
change environment in order that better individuals may be born.
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; but that which is born
of spirit tainted by corruptions of the flesh is still tainted.”

The conclusion best warranted by science seems to be that of
Wallace, in the Forum, August, 1890, namely, that there is always
a _tendency_ to transmit acquired characters, but that only those
which affect the blood and nervous system, like drunkenness and
syphilis, overcome the fixed habit of the organism and make
themselves permanent. Applying this principle now to the
connection of Adam with the race, we regard the sin of Adam as a
radical one, comparable only to the act of faith which merges the
soul in Christ. It was a turning away of the whole being from the
light and love of God, and a setting of the face toward darkness
and death. Every subsequent act was an act in the same direction,
but an act which manifested, not altered, the nature. This first
act of sin deprived the nature of all moral sustenance and growth,
except so far as the still immanent God counteracted the inherent
tendencies to evil. Adam’s posterity inherited his corrupt nature,
but they do not inherit any subsequently acquired characters,
either those of their first father or of their immediate
ancestors.

Bascom, Comparative Psychology, chap. VII—“Modifications, however
great, like artificial disablement, that do not work into
physiological structure, do not transmit themselves. The more
conscious and voluntary our acquisitions are, the less are they
transmitted by inheritance.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature,
88—“Heredity and individual action may combine their forces and so
intensify one or more of the inherited motives that the form is
affected by it and the effect may be transmitted to the offspring.
So conflict of inheritances may lead to the institution of
variety. Accumulation of impulses may lead to sudden revolution,
and the species may be changed, not by environment, but by contest
between the host of inheritances.” Visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children was thought to be outrageous doctrine,
so long as it was taught only in Scripture. It is now vigorously
applauded, since it takes the name of heredity. _Dale, Ephesians,
189_—“When we were young, we fought with certain sins and killed
them; they trouble us no more; but their ghosts seem to rise from
their graves in the distant years and to clothe themselves in the
flesh and blood of our children.” See A. M. Marshall, Biological
Lectures, 273; Mivart, in Harper’s Magazine, March, 1895:682;
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 176.

F. That, if all moral consequences are properly penalties, sin, considered
as a sinful nature, must be the punishment of sin, considered as the act
of our first parents.

But we reply that the impropriety of punishing sin with sin vanishes when
we consider that the sin which is punished is our own, equally with the
sin with which we are punished. The objection is valid as against the
Federal theory or the theory of Mediate Imputation, but not as against the
theory of Adam’s Natural Headship. To deny that God, through the operation
of second causes, may punish the act of transgression by the habit and
tendency which result from it, is to ignore the facts of every-day life,
as well as the statements of Scripture in which sin is represented as ever
reproducing itself, and with each reproduction increasing its guilt and
punishment (Rom. 6:19; James 1:15.)

_Rom. 6:19_—“_as ye presented your members as servants to
uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present
your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification_”;
_Eph. 4:22_—“_waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit_”; _James
1:15_—“_Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and
the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death_”; _2 Tim.
3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse,
deceiving and being deceived._” See Meyer on _Rom.
1:24_—“_Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts
unto uncleanness._” All effects become in their turn causes.
Schiller: “This is the very curse of evil deed, That of new evil
it becomes the seed.” Tennyson, Vision of Sin: “Behold it was a
crime Of sense, avenged by sense that wore with time. Another
said: The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal
blame.” Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless, 52—“The punishment
of sin essentially consists in the wider spread and stronger hold
of the malady of the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—‘_His own iniquities shall
take the wicked._’ The habit of sinning holds the wicked ‘_with
the cords of his sin_.’ Sin is self-perpetuating. The sinner
gravitates from worse to worse, in an ever-deepening fall.” The
least of our sins has in it a power of infinite expansion,—left to
itself it would flood a world with misery and destruction.

Wisdom, 11:16—“Wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also he
shall be punished.” Shakespeare, Richard II, 5:5—“I wasted time,
and now doth time waste me”; Richard III, 4:2—“I am in so far in
blood, that sin will pluck on sin”; Pericles, 1:1—“One sin I know
another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke;”
King Lear, 5:3—“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make
instruments to scourge us.” “Marlowe’s Faustus typifies the
continuous degradation of a soul that has renounced its ideal, and
the drawing on of one vice by another, for they go hand in hand
like the Hours” (James Russell Lowell). Mrs. Humphrey Ward, David
Grieve, 410—“After all, there’s not much hope when the craving
returns on a man of his age, especially after some years’
interval.”

G. That the doctrine excludes all separate probation of individuals since
Adam, by making their moral life a mere manifestation of tendencies
received from him.

We reply that the objection takes into view only our connection with the
race, and ignores the complementary and equally important fact of each
man’s personal will. That personal will does more than simply express the
nature; it may to a certain extent curb the nature, or it may, on the
other hand, add a sinful character and influence of its own. There is, in
other words, a remainder of freedom, which leaves room for personal
probation, in addition to the race-probation in Adam.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, objects to the Augustinian view that if
personal sin proceeds from original, the only thing men are guilty
for is Adam’s sin; all subsequent sin is a spontaneous
development; the individual will can only manifest its inborn
character. But we reply that this is a misrepresentation of
Augustine. He does not thus lose sight of the remainders of
freedom in man (see references on page 620, in the statement of
Augustine’s view, and in the section following this, on Ability,
640-644). He says that the corrupt tree may produce the wild fruit
of morality, though not the divine fruit of grace. It is not true
that the will is absolutely as the character. Though character is
the surest index as to what the decisions of the will may be, it
is not an infallible one. Adam’s first sin, and the sins of men
after regeneration, prove this. Irregular, spontaneous,
exceptional though these decisions are, they are still acts of the
will, and they show that the agent is not _bound_ by motives nor
by character.

Here is our answer to the question whether it be not a sin to
propagate the race and produce offspring. Each child has a
personal will which may have a probation of its own and a chance
for deliverance. Denney, Studies in Theology, 87-99—“What we
inherit may be said to fix our trial, but not our fate. We belong
to God as well as to the past.” “_All souls are mine_” (_Ez.
18:4_); “_Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice_” (_John
18:37_). Thomas Fuller: “1. Roboam begat Abia; that is, a bad
father begat a bad son; 2. Abia begat Asa; that is, a bad father
begat a good son; & Asa begat Josaphat; that is, a good father a
good son; 4. Josaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad
son. I see, Lord, from hence, that my father’s piety cannot be
entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see that actual impiety
is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.” Butcher,
Aspects of Greek Genius, 121—Among the Greeks, “The popular view
was that guilt is inherited; that is, that the children are
punished for their fathers’ sins. The view of Æschylus, and of
Sophocles also, was that a tendency towards guilt was inherited,
but that this tendency does not annihilate man’s free will. If
therefore the children are punished, they are punished for their
own sins. But Sophocles saw the further truth that innocent
children may suffer for their fathers’ sins.”

Julius Müller, Doc. Sin, 2:316—“The merely organic theory of sin
leads to naturalism, which endangers not only the doctrine of a
final judgment, but that of personal immortality generally.” In
preaching, therefore, we should begin with the known and
acknowledged sins of men. We should lay the same stress upon our
connection with Adam that the Scripture does, to explain the
problem of universal and inveterate sinful tendencies, to enforce
our need of salvation from this common ruin, and to illustrate our
connection with Christ. Scripture does not, and we need not, make
our responsibility for Adam’s sin the great theme of preaching.
See A. H. Strong, on Christian Individualism, and on The New
Theology, in Philosophy and Religion, 156-163, 164-179.

H. That the organic unity of the race in the transgression is a thing so
remote from common experience that the preaching of it neutralizes all
appeals to the conscience.

But whatever of truth there is in this objection is due to the
self-isolating nature of sin. Men feel the unity of the family, the
profession, the nation to which they belong, and, just in proportion to
the breadth of their sympathies and their experience of divine grace, do
they enter into Christ’s feeling of unity with the race (_cf._ Is. 6:5;
Lam. 3:39-45; Ezra 9:6; Neh. 1:6). The fact that the self-contained and
self-seeking recognize themselves as responsible only for their personal
acts should not prevent our pressing upon men’s attention the more
searching standards of the Scriptures. Only thus can the Christian find a
solution for the dark problem of a corruption which is inborn yet
condemnable; only thus can the unregenerate man be led to a full knowledge
of the depth of his ruin and of his absolute dependence upon God for
salvation.

Identification of the individual with the nation or the race: _Is.
6:5_—“_Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips_”;
_Lam. 3:42_—“_We have transgressed and have rebelled_”; _Ezra
9:6_—“_I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God;
for our iniquities are increased over our head_”; _Neh. 1:6_—“_I
confess the sins of the children of Israel.... Yea, I and my
father’s house have sinned._” So God punishes all Israel for
David’s sin of pride; so the sins of Reuben, Canaan, Achan,
Gehazi, are visited on their children or descendants.

H. B. Smith, System, 296, 297—“Under the moral government of God
one man may justly suffer on account of the sins of another. An
organic relation of men is regarded in the great judgment of God
in history.... There is evil which comes upon individuals, not as
punishment for their personal sins, but still as suffering which
comes under a moral government.... _Jer. 32:18_ reasserts the
declaration of the second commandment, that God visits the
iniquity of the fathers upon their children. It may be said that
all these are merely ‘consequences’ of family or tribal or
national or race relations,—‘Evil becomes cosmical by reason of
fastening on relations which were originally adapted to making
good cosmical:’ but then God’s _plan_ must be in the
consequences—a plan administered by a moral being, over moral
beings, according to moral considerations, and for moral ends;
and, if that be fully taken into view, the dispute as to
’consequences’ or ’punishment’ becomes a merely verbal one.”

There is a common conscience over and above the private
conscience, and it controls individuals, as appears in great
crises like those at which the fall of Fort Sumter summoned men to
defend the Union and the Proclamation of Emancipation sounded the
death-knell of slavery. Coleridge said that original sin is the
one mystery that makes all things clear; see Fisher, Nature and
Method of Revelation, 151-157. Bradford, Heredity, 34, quotes from
Elam, A Physician’s Problems, 5—“An acquired and habitual vice
will rarely fail to leave its trace upon one or more of the
offspring, either in its original form, or one closely allied. The
habit of the parent becomes the all but irresistible impulse of
the child; ... the organic tendency is excited to the uttermost,
and the power of will and of conscience is proportionally
weakened.... So the sins of the parents are visited upon the
children.”

Pascal: “It is astonishing that the mystery which is furthest
removed from our knowledge—I mean the transmission of original
sin—should be that without which we have no true knowledge of
ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clue to our condition
takes its turnings and windings, insomuch that man is more
incomprehensible without the mystery than this mystery is
incomprehensible to man.” Yet Pascal’s perplexity was largely due
to his holding the Augustinian position that inherited sin is
damning and brings eternal death, while not holding to the
coördinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of
the species in Adam; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:18. Atomism is
egotistic. The purest and noblest feel most strongly that humanity
is not like a heap of sand-grains or a row of bricks set on end,
but that it is an organic unity. So the Christian feels for the
family and for the church. So Christ, in Gethsemane, felt for the
race. If it be said that the tendency of the Augustinian view is
to diminish the sense of guilt for personal sins, we reply that
only those who recognize _sins_ as rooted in _sin_ can properly
recognize the evil of them. To such they are _symptoms_ of an
apostasy from God so deep-seated and universal that nothing but
infinite grace can deliver us from it.

I. That a constitution by which the sin of one individual involves in
guilt and condemnation the nature of all men who descend from him is
contrary to God’s justice.

We acknowledge that no human theory can fully solve the mystery of
imputation. But we prefer to attribute God’s dealings to justice rather
than to sovereignty. The following considerations, though partly
hypothetical, may throw light upon the subject: (_a_) A probation of our
common nature in Adam, sinless as he was and with full knowledge of God’s
law, is more consistent with divine justice than a separate probation of
each individual, with inexperience, inborn depravity, and evil example,
all favoring a decision against God. (_b_) A constitution which made a
common fall possible may have been indispensable to any provision of a
common salvation. (_c_) Our chance for salvation as sinners under grace
may be better than it would have been as sinless Adams under law. (_d_) A
constitution which permitted oneness with the first Adam in the
transgression cannot be unjust, since a like principle of oneness with
Christ, the second Adam, secures our salvation. (_e_) There is also a
_physical_ and _natural_ union with Christ which antedates the fall and
which is incident to man’s creation. The immanence of Christ in humanity
guarantees a continuous divine effort to remedy the disaster caused by
man’s free will, and to restore the _moral_ union with God which the race
has lost by the fall.

Thus our ruin and our redemption were alike wrought out without personal
act of ours. As all the natural life of humanity was in Adam, so all the
spiritual life of humanity was in Christ. As our old nature was corrupted
in Adam and propagated to us by physical generation, so our new nature was
restored in Christ and communicated to us by the regenerating work of the
Holy Spirit. If then we are justified upon the ground of our inbeing in
Christ, we may in like manner be condemned on the ground of our inbeing in
Adam.

Stearns, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:95—“The silence of Scripture
respecting the precise connection between the first great sin and
the sins of the millions of individuals who have lived since then
is a silence that neither science nor philosophy has been, or is,
able to break with a satisfactory explanation. Separate the
twofold nature of man, corporate and individual. Recognize in the
one the region of necessity; in the other the region of freedom.
The scientific law of heredity has brought into new currency the
doctrine which the old theologians sought to express under the
name of original sin,—a term which had a meaning as it was at
first used by Augustine, but which is an awkward misnomer if we
accept any other theory but his.”

Dr. Hovey claims that the Augustinian view breaks down when
applied to the connection between the justification of believers
and the righteousness of Christ; for believers were not in Christ,
as to the substance of their souls, when he wrought out redemption
for them. But we reply that the life of Christ which makes us
Christians is the same life which made atonement upon the cross
and which rose from the grave for our justification. The parallel
between Adam and Christ is of the nature of analogy, not of
identity. With Adam, we have a connection of physical life; with
Christ, a connection of spiritual life.

Stahl, Philosophie des Rechts, quoted in Olshausen’s Com. on _Rom.
5:12-21_—“Adam is the original _matter_ of humanity; Christ is its
original _idea_ in God; both personally living. Mankind is one in
them. Therefore Adam’s sin became the sin of all; Christ’s
sacrifice the atonement for all. Every leaf of a tree may be green
or wither by itself; but each suffers by the disease of the root,
and recovers only by its healing. The shallower the man, so much
more isolated will everything appear to him; for upon the surface
all lies apart. He will see in mankind, in the nation, nay, even
in the family, mere individuals, where the act of the one has no
connection with that of the other. The profounder the man, the
more do these inward relations of unity, proceeding from the very
centre, force themselves upon him. Yea, the love of our neighbor
is itself nothing but the deep feeling of this unity; for we love
him only, with whom we feel and acknowledge ourselves to be one.
What the Christian love of our neighbor is for the heart, that
unity of race is for the understanding. If sin through one, and
redemption through one, is not possible, the command to love our
neighbor is also unintelligible. Christian ethics and Christian
faith are therefore in truth indissolubly united. Christianity
effects in history an advance like that from the animal kingdom to
man, by its revealing the essential unity of men, the
consciousness of which in the ancient world had vanished when the
nations were separated.”

If the sins of the parents were not visited upon the children,
neither could their virtues be; the possibility of the one
involves the possibility of the other. If the guilt of our first
father could not be transmitted to all who derive their life from
him, then the justification of Christ could not be transmitted to
all who derive their life from him. We do not, however, see any
Scripture warrant for the theory that all men are justified from
original sin by virtue of their natural connection with Christ. He
who is the life of all men bestows manifold temporal blessings
upon the ground of his atonement. But justification from sin is
conditioned upon conscious surrender of the human will and trust
in the divine mercy. The immanent Christ is ever urging man
individually and collectively toward such decision. But the
acceptance or rejection of the offered grace is left to man’s free
will. This principle enables us properly to estimate the view of
Dr. Henry E. Robins which follows.

H. E. Robins, Harmony of Ethics with Theology, 51—“All men born of
Adam stand in such a relation to Christ that salvation is their
birthright under promise—a birthright which can only be forfeited
by their intelligent, personal, moral action, as was Esau’s.” Dr.
Robins holds to an inchoate justification of all—a justification
which becomes actual and complete only when the soul closes with
Christ’s offer to the sinner. We prefer to say that humanity in
Christ is ideally justified because Christ himself is justified,
but that individual men are justified only when they consciously
appropriate his offered grace or surrender themselves to his
renewing Spirit. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 312—“The grace of God is
as organic in its relation to man as is the evil in his nature.
Grace also reigns wherever justice reigns.” William Ashmore, on
the New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review,
26:245-264—“There is a gospel of nature commensurate with the law
of nature; _Rom. 3:22_—‘_unto all, and upon all them that
believe_’; the first ‘_all_’ is unlimited; the second ‘_all_’ is
limited to those who believe.”

R. W. Dale, Ephesians, 180—“Our fortunes were identified with the
fortunes of Christ; in the divine thought and purpose we were
inseparable from him. Had we been true and loyal to the divine
idea, the energy of Christ’s righteousness would have drawn us
upward to height after height of goodness and joy, until we
ascended from this earthly life to the larger powers and loftier
services and richer delights of other and diviner worlds; and
still, through one golden age of intellectual and ethical and
spiritual growth after another, we should have continued to rise
towards Christ’s transcendent and infinite perfection. But we
sinned; and as the union between Christ and us could not be broken
without the final and irrevocable defeat of the divine purpose,
Christ was drawn down from the serene heavens to the confused and
troubled life of our race, to pain, to temptation, to anguish, to
the cross and to the grave, and so the mystery of his atonement
for our sin was consummated.”

For replies to the foregoing and other objections, see Schaff, in
Bib. Sac., 5:230; Shedd, Sermons to the Nat. Man, 266-284; Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 507-509, 529-544; Birks, Difficulties of Belief,
134-188; Edwards, Original Sin, in Works, 2:473-510; Atwater, on
Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton Review, 1875:73;
Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 96-100. _Per contra_,
see Moxom, in Bap. Rev., 1881:273-287; Park, Discourses, 210-233;
Bradford, Heredity, 237.

Section VI.—Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity.

As the result of Adam’s transgression, all his posterity are born in the
same state into which he fell. But since law is the all-comprehending
demand of harmony with God, all moral consequences flowing from
transgression are to be regarded as sanctions of law, or expressions of
the divine displeasure through the constitution of things which he has
established. Certain of these consequences, however, are earlier
recognized than others and are of minor scope; it will therefore be useful
to consider them under the three aspects of depravity, guilt, and penalty.

I. Depravity.

By this we mean, on the one hand, the lack of original righteousness or of
holy affection toward God, and, on the other hand, the corruption of the
moral nature, or bias toward evil. That such depravity exists has been
abundantly shown, both from Scripture and from reason, in our
consideration of the universality of sin.

Salvation is twofold: deliverance from the evil—the penalty and
the power of sin; and accomplishment of the good—likeness to God
and realization of the true idea of humanity. It includes all
these for the race as well as for the individual: removal of the
barriers that keep men from each other; and the perfecting of
society in communion with God; or, in other words, the kingdom of
God on earth. It was the nature of man, when he first came from
the hand of God, to fear, love, and trust God above all things.
This tendency toward God has been lost; sin has altered and
corrupted man’s innermost nature. In place of this bent toward God
there is a fearful bent toward evil. Depravity is both
negative—absence of love and of moral likeness to God—and
positive—presence of manifold tendencies to evil. Two questions
only need detain us:

1. Depravity partial or total?

The Scriptures represent human nature as totally depraved. The phrase
“total depravity,” however, is liable to misinterpretation, and should not
be used without explanation. By the total depravity of universal humanity
we mean:

A. Negatively,—not that every sinner is: (_a_) Destitute of
conscience,—for the existence of strong impulses to right, and of remorse
for wrong-doing, show that conscience is often keen; (_b_) devoid of all
qualities pleasing to men, and useful when judged by a human standard,—for
the existence of such qualities is recognized by Christ; (_c_) prone to
every form of sin,—for certain forms of sin exclude certain others; (_d_)
intense as he can be in his selfishness and opposition to God,—for he
becomes worse every day.

(_a_) _John 8:9_—“_And they, when they heard it, went out one by
one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last_” (_John
7:53-8:11_, though not written by John, is a perfectly true
narrative, descended from the apostolic age). The muscles of a
dead frog’s leg will contract when a current of electricity is
sent into them. So the dead soul will thrill at touch of the
divine law. Natural conscience, combined with the principle of
self-love, may even prompt choice of the good, though no love for
God is in the choice. Bengel: “We have lost our likeness to God;
but there remains notwithstanding an indelible nobility which we
ought to revere both in ourselves and in others. We still have
remained men, to be conformed to that likeness, through the divine
blessing to which man’s will should subscribe. This they forget
who speak evil of human nature. Absalom fell out of his father’s
favor; but the people, for all that, recognized in him the son of
the king.”

(_b_) _Mark 10:21_—“_And Jesus looking upon him loved him._” These
very qualities, however, may show that their possessors are
sinning against great light and are the more guilty; _cf._ _Mal.
1:6_—“_A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if
then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master,
where is my fear?_” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
2:75—“The assertor of the total depravity of human nature, of its
absolute blindness and incapacity, presupposes in himself and in
others the presence of a criterion or principle of good, in virtue
of which he discerns himself to be wholly evil; yet the very
proposition that human nature is wholly evil would be
unintelligible unless it were false.... Consciousness of sin is a
negative sign of the possibility of restoration. But it is not in
itself proof that the possibility will become actuality.” A ruined
temple may have beautiful fragments of fluted columns, but it is
no proper habitation for the god for whose worship it was built.

(_c_) _Mat. 23:23_—“_ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have
left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy,
and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left
the other undone_”; _Rom. 2:14_—“_when Gentiles that have not the
law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law,
are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law
written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness
therewith._” The sin of miserliness may exclude the sin of luxury;
the sin of pride may exclude the sin of sensuality. Shakespeare,
Othello, 2:3—“It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place
to the devil Wrath.” Franklin Carter, Life of Mark Hopkins,
321-323—Dr. Hopkins did not think that the sons of God should
describe themselves as once worms or swine or vipers. Yet he held
that man could sink to a degradation below the brute: “No brute is
any more capable of rebelling against God than of serving him; is
any more capable of sinking below the level of its own nature than
of rising to the level of man. No brute can be either a fool or a
fiend.... In the way that sin and corruption came into the
spiritual realm we find one of those analogies to what takes place
in the lower forms of being that show the unity of the system
throughout. All disintegration and corruption of matter is from
the domination of a lower over a higher law. The body begins to
return to its original elements as the lower chemical and physical
forces begin to gain ascendancy over the higher force of life. In
the same way all sin and corruption in man is from his yielding to
a lower law or principle of action in opposition to the demands of
one that is higher.”

(_d_) _Gen. 15:16_—“_the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet
full_”; _2 Tim. 3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and
worse._” Depravity is not simply being deprived of good.
Depravation (_de_, and _pravus_, crooked, perverse) is more than
deprivation. Left to himself man tends downward, and his sin
increases day by day. But there is a divine influence within which
quickens conscience and kindles aspiration for better things. The
immanent Christ is “_the light which lighteth every man_” (_John
1:9_). Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “In so far as God’s Spirit is at
work among men and they receive ‘_the Light which lighteth every
man_,’ we must qualify our statement of total depravity. Depravity
is not so much a state as a tendency. With growing complexity of
life, sin becomes more complex. Adam’s sin was not the worst. ‘_It
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of
judgment, than for thee_’ (_Mat. 11:24_).”

Men are not yet in the condition of demons. Only here and there
have they attained to “a disinterested love of evil.” Such men are
few, and they were not born so. There are degrees in depravity. E.
G. Robinson: “There is a good streak left in the devil yet.” Even
Satan will become worse than he now is. The phrase “total
depravity” has respect only to relations to God, and it means
incapability of doing anything which in the sight of God is a good
act. No act is perfectly good that does not proceed from a true
heart and constitute an expression of that heart. Yet we have no
right to say that every act of an unregenerate man is displeasing
to God. Right acts from right motives are good, whether performed
by a Christian or by one who is unrenewed in heart. Such acts,
however, are always prompted by God, and thanks for them are due
to God and not to him who performed them.

B. Positively,—that every sinner is: (_a_) totally destitute of that love
to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of the
law; (_b_) chargeable with elevating some lower affection or desire above
regard for God and his law; (_c_) supremely determined, in his whole
inward and outward life, by a preference of self to God; (_d_) possessed
of an aversion to God which, though sometimes latent, becomes active
enmity, so soon as God’s will comes into manifest conflict with his own;
(_e_) disordered and corrupted in every faculty, through this substitution
of selfishness for supreme affection toward God; (_f_) credited with no
thought, emotion, or act of which divine holiness can fully approve; (_g_)
subject to a law of constant progress in depravity, which he has no
recuperative energy to enable him successfully to resist.

(_a_) _John 5:42_—“_But I know you, that ye have not the love of
God in yourselves._” (_b_) _2 Tim. 3:4_—“_lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God_”; _cf._ _Mal 1:6_—“_A son honoreth his
father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is
mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?_” (_c_) _2
Tim. 3:2_—“_lovers of self_”; (_d_) _Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the
flesh is enmity against God._” (_e_) _Eph. 4:18_—“_darkened in
their understanding.... hardening of their heart_”; _Tit.
1:15_—“_both their mind and their conscience are defiled_”; _2
Cor. 7:1_—“_defilement of flesh and spirit_”; _Heb. 3:12_—“_an
evil heart of unbelief_”; (_f_) _Rom. 3:9_—“_they are all under
sin_”; _7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing._” (_g_) _Rom. 7:18_—“_to will is present with me, but to do
that which is good is not_”; _23_—“_law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under
the law of sin which is in my members._”

Every sinner would prefer a milder law and a different
administration. But whoever does not love God’s law does not truly
love God. The sinner seeks to secure his own interests rather than
God’s. Even so-called religious acts he performs with preference
of his own good to God’s glory. He disobeys, and always has
disobeyed, the fundamental law of love. He is like a railway train
on a down grade, and the brakes must be applied by God or
destruction is sure. There are latent passions in every heart
which if let loose would curse the world. Many a man who escaped
from the burning Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, proved himself a
brute and a demon, by trampling down fugitives who cried for
mercy. Denney, Studies in Theology, 83—“The depravity which sin
has produced in human nature extends to the whole of it. There is
no part of man’s nature which is unaffected by it. Man’s nature is
all of a piece, and what affects it at all affects it altogether.
When the conscience is violated by disobedience to the will of
God, the moral understanding is darkened, and the will is
enfeebled. We are not constructed in water-tight compartments, one
of which might be ruined while the others remained intact.” Yet
over against total depravity, we must set total redemption; over
against original sin, original grace. Christ is in every human
heart mitigating the affects of sin, urging to repentance, and
“_able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him_” (_Heb. 7:25_). Even the unregenerate heathen may
“_put away ... the old man_” and “_put on the new man_” (_Eph.
4:23, 24_), being delivered “_out of the body of this death ...
through Jesus Christ our Lord_” (_Rom. 7:24, 25_).

H. B. Smith, System, 277—“By total depravity is never meant that
men are as bad as they can be; nor that they have not, in their
natural condition, certain amiable qualities; nor that they may
not have virtues in a limited sense (_justitia civilis_). But it
is meant (1) that depravity, or the sinful condition of man,
infects the whole man: intellect, feeling, heart and will; (2)
that in each unrenewed person some lower affection is supreme; and
(3) that each such is destitute of love to God. On these
positions: as to (1) the power of depravity over the _whole_ man,
we have given proof from Scripture; as to (2) the fact that in
every unrenewed man some lower affection is supreme, experience
may be always appealed to; men know that their supreme affection
is fixed on some lower good—intellect, heart, and will going
together in it; or that some form of selfishness is
predominant—using selfish in a general sense—self seeks its
happiness in some inferior object, giving to that its supreme
affection; as to (3) that every unrenewed person is without
supreme love to God, it is the point which is of greatest force,
and is to be urged with the strongest effect, in setting forth the
depth and ‘totality’ of man’s sinfulness: unrenewed men have not
that supreme love of God which is the substance of the first and
great command.” See also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 248; Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 510-522; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:519-542;
Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:516-531; Princeton Review, 1877:470.

2. Ability or inability?

In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious
ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School
theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to
turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God’s sight (see
Scripture proof below). A proper conception also of the law, as reflecting
the holiness of God and as expressing the ideal of human nature, leads us
to the conclusion that no man whose powers are weakened by either original
or actual sin can of himself come up to that perfect standard. Yet there
is a certain remnant of freedom left to man. The sinner _can_ (_a_) avoid
the sin against the Holy Ghost; (_b_) choose the less sin rather than the
greater; (_c_) refuse altogether to yield to certain temptations; (_d_) do
outwardly good acts, though with imperfect motives; (_e_) seek God from
motives of self-interest.

But on the other hand the sinner _cannot_ (_a_) by a single volition bring
his character and life into complete conformity to God’s law; (_b_) change
his fundamental preference for self and sin to supreme love for God; nor
(_c_) do any act, however insignificant, which shall meet with God’s
approval or answer fully to the demands of law.

So long, then, as there are states of intellect, affection and
will which man cannot, by any power of volition or of contrary
choice remaining to him, bring into subjection to God, it cannot
be said that he possesses any sufficient ability of himself to do
God’s will; and if a basis for man’s responsibility and guilt be
sought, it must be found, if at all, not in his plenary ability,
his gracious ability, or his natural ability, but in his
_original_ ability, when he came, in Adam, from the hands of his
Maker.

Man’s present inability is natural, in the sense of being
inborn,—it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital.
It is not natural, however, as resulting from the original
limitations of human nature, or from the subsequent loss of any
essential faculty of that nature. Human nature, at its first
creation, was endowed with ability perfectly to keep the law of
God. Man has not, even by his sin, lost his essential faculties of
intellect, affection, or will. He has weakened those faculties,
however, so that they are now unable to work up to the normal
measure of their powers. But more especially has man given to
every faculty a bent away from God which renders him morally
unable to render spiritual obedience. The inability to good which
now characterizes human nature is an inability that results from
sin, and is itself sin.

We hold, therefore, to an inability which is both natural and
moral,—moral, as having its source in the self-corruption of man’s
moral nature and the fundamental aversion of his will to
God;—natural, as being inborn, and as affecting with partial
paralysis all his natural powers of intellect, affection,
conscience, and will. For his inability, in both these aspects of
it, man is responsible.

The sinner can do one very important thing, _viz._: give attention
to divine truth. _Ps. 119:59_—“_I thought on my ways, And turned
my feet unto thy testimonies._” G. W. Northrup: “The sinner can
seek God from: (_a_) self-love, regard for his own interest; (_b_)
feeling of duty, sense of obligation, awakened conscience; (_c_)
gratitude for blessings already received; (_d_) aspiration after
the infinite and satisfying.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 85—“A
witty French moralist has said that God does not need to grudge to
his enemies even what they call their virtues; and neither do
God’s ministers.... But there is _one_ thing which man cannot do
_alone_,—he cannot bring his state into harmony with his nature.
When a man has been discovered who has been able, without Christ,
to reconcile himself to God and to obtain dominion over the world
and over sin, _then_ the doctrine of inability, or of the bondage
due to sin, may be denied; _then_, but _not till then_.” The Free
Church of Scotland, in the Declaratory Act of 1892, says “that, in
holding and teaching, according to the Confession of Faith, the
corruption of man’s whole nature as fallen, this church also
maintains that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in
the image of God; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of
duty; that he is responsible for compliance with the moral law and
with the gospel; and that, although unable without the aid of the
Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and
actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.”

To the use of the term “natural ability” to designate merely the sinner’s
possession of all the constituent faculties of human nature, we object
upon the following grounds:

A. Quantitative lack.—The phrase “natural ability” is misleading, since it
seems to imply that the existence of the mere powers of intellect,
affection, and will is a sufficient quantitative qualification for
obedience to God’s law, whereas these powers have been weakened by sin,
and are naturally unable, instead of naturally able, to render back to God
with interest the talent first bestowed. Even if the moral direction of
man’s faculties were a normal one, the effect of hereditary and of
personal sin would render naturally impossible that large likeness to God
which the law of absolute perfection demands. Man has not therefore the
natural ability perfectly to obey God. He had it once, but he lost it with
the first sin.

When Jean Paul Richter says of himself: “I have made of myself all
that could be made out of the stuff,” he evinces a
self-complacency which is due to self-ignorance and lack of moral
insight. When a man realizes the extent of the law’s demands, he
sees that without divine help obedience is impossible. John B.
Gough represented the confirmed drunkard’s efforts at reformation
as a man’s walking up Mount Etna knee-deep in burning lava, or as
one’s rowing against the rapids of Niagara.

B. Qualitative lack.—Since the law of God requires of men not so much
right single volitions as conformity to God in the whole inward state of
the affections and will, the power of contrary choice in single volitions
does not constitute a natural ability to obey God, unless man can by those
single volitions change the underlying state of the affections and will.
But this power man does not possess. Since God judges all moral action in
connection with the general state of the heart and life, natural ability
to good involves not only a full complement of faculties but also a bias
of the affections and will toward God. Without this bias there is no
possibility of right moral action, and where there is no such possibility,
there can be no ability either natural or moral.

Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 21—“Hatred is like love Herein, that it,
by only being, grows. Until at last usurping quite the man, It
overgrows him like a polypus.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:53—“The
ideal is the revelation in me of a power that is mightier than my
own. The supreme command ‘Thou oughtest’ is the utterance, only
different in form, of the same voice in my spirit which says ‘Thou
canst’; and my highest spiritual attainments are achieved, not by
self-assertion, but by self-renunciation and self-surrender to the
infinite life of truth and righteousness that is living and
reigning within me.” This conscious inability in one’s self,
together with reception of “_the strength which God supplieth_”
(_1 Pet. 4:11_), is the secret of Paul’s courage; _2 Cor.
12:10_—“_when I am weak, then am I strong_”; _Phil. 2:12,
13_—“_work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it
is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasure._”

C. No such ability known.—In addition to the psychological argument just
mentioned, we may urge another from experience and observation. These
testify that man is cognizant of no such ability. Since no man has ever
yet, by the exercise of his natural powers, turned himself to God or done
an act truly good in God’s sight, the existence of a natural ability to do
good is a pure assumption. There is no scientific warrant for inferring
the existence of an ability which has never manifested itself in a single
instance since history began.

“Solomon could not keep the Proverbs,—so he wrote them.” The book
of Proverbs needs for its complement the New Testament explanation
of helplessness and offer of help: _John 15:5_—“_apart from me ye
can do nothing_”; _6:37_—“_him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out._” The palsied man’s inability to walk is very different
from his indisposition to accept a remedy. The paralytic cannot
climb the cliff, but by a rope let down to him he may be lifted
up, provided he will permit himself to be tied to it. Darling, in
Presb. and Ref. Rev., July, 1901:505—“If bidden, we can stretch
out a withered arm; but God does not require this of one born
armless. We may ‘_hear the voice of the Son of God_’ and ‘_live_’
(_John 5:25_), but we shall not bring out of the tomb faculties
not possessed before death.”

D. Practical evil of the belief.—The practical evil attending the
preaching of natural ability furnishes a strong argument against it. The
Scriptures, in their declarations of the sinner’s inability and
helplessness, aim to shut him up to sole dependence upon God for
salvation. The doctrine of natural ability, assuring him that he is able
at once to repent and turn to God, encourages delay by putting salvation
at all times within his reach. If a single volition will secure it, he may
be saved as easily to-morrow as to-day. The doctrine of inability presses
men to immediate acceptance of God’s offers, lest the day of grace for
them pass by.

Those who care most for self are those in whom self becomes
thoroughly subjected and enslaved to external influences. _Mat.
16:25_—“_whosoever would save his life shall lose it._” The
selfish man is a straw on the surface of a rushing stream. He
becomes more and more a victim of circumstance, until at last he
has no more freedom than the brute. _Ps. 49:20_—“_Man that is in
honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish_;”
see R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 121. Robert
Browning, unpublished poem: “ ‘Would a man ’scape the rod?’ Rabbi
Ben Karshook saith, ‘See that he turn to God The day before his
death.’ ‘Aye, could a man inquire When it shall come?’ I say. The
Rabbi’s eye shoots fire—‘Then let him turn to-day.’ ”

Let us repeat, however, that the denial to man of all ability, whether
natural or moral, to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good
in God’s sight, does not imply a denial of man’s power to order his
external life in many particulars conformably to moral rules, or even to
attain the praise of men for virtue. Man has still a range of freedom in
acting out his nature, and he may to a certain limited extent act down
upon that nature, and modify it, by isolated volitions externally
conformed to God’s law. He may choose higher or lower forms of selfish
action, and may pursue these chosen courses with various degrees of
selfish energy. Freedom of choice, within this limit, is by no means
incompatible with complete bondage of the will in spiritual things.

_John 1:13_—“_born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God_”; _3:5_—“_Except one be born
of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God_”; _6:44_—“_No man can come to me, except the Father that sent
me draw him_”; _8:34_—“_Every one that committeth sin is the
bondservant of sin_”; _15:4, 5_—“_the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself ... apart from me ye can do nothing_”; _Rom. 7:18_—“_in me,
that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; for to will is
present with me, but to do that which it good is not_”;
_24_—“_Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the
body of this death?_” _8:7, 8_—“_the mind of the flesh is enmity
against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can it be: and they that are is the flesh cannot please
God_”; _1 Cor. 2:14_—“_the natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; __ and he
cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged_”; _2 Cor.
3:5_—“_not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account
anything as from ourselves_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_dead through your
trespasses and sins_”; _8-10_—“_by grace have ye been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works_”; _Heb.
11:6_—“_without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto
him._”

Kant’s “I ought, therefore I can” is the relic of man’s original
consciousness of freedom—the freedom with which man was endowed at
his creation—a freedom, now, alas! destroyed by sin. Or it may be
the courage of the soul in which God is working anew by his
Spirit. For Kant’s “Ich soll, also Ich kann,” Julius Müller would
substitute: “Ich sollte freilich können, aber Ich kann nicht”—“I
ought indeed to be able, but I am not able.” Man truly repents
only when he learns that his sin has made him unable to repent
without the renewing grace of God. Emerson, in his poem entitled
“Voluntariness,” says: “So near is grandeur to our dust, So near
is God to man, When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, The youth
replies, _I can_.” But, apart from special grace, all the ability
which man at present possesses comes far short of fulfilling the
spiritual demands of God’s law. Parental and civil law implies a
certain kind of power. Puritan theology called man “_free among
the dead_” (_Ps. 88:5_, A. V.). There was a range of freedom
inside of slavery,—the will was “a drop of water imprisoned in a
solid crystal” (Oliver Wendell Holmes). The man who kills himself
is as dead as if he had been killed by another (Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:106).

Westminster Confession, 9:3—“Man by his fall into a state of sin
hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
accompanying salvation; so, as a natural man, being altogether
averse from that good and dead in sin, he is not able by his own
strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”
Hopkins, Works, 1:233-235—“So long as the sinner’s opposition of
heart and will continues, he cannot come to Christ. It is
impossible, and will continue so, until his unwillingness and
opposition be removed by a change and renovation of his heart by
divine grace, and he be made willing in the day of God’s power.”
Hopkins speaks of “utter inability to obey the law of God, yea,
utter impossibility.”

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:257-277—“Inability consists, not in the
loss of any faculty of the soul, nor in the loss of free agency,
for the sinner determines his own acts, nor in mere disinclination
to what is good. It arises from want of spiritual discernment, and
hence want of proper affections. Inability belongs only to the
things of the Spirit. What man cannot do is to repent, believe,
regenerate himself. He cannot put forth any act which merits the
approbation of God. Sin cleaves to all he does, and from its
dominion he cannot free himself. The distinction between natural
and moral ability is of no value. Shall we say that the uneducated
man can understand and appreciate the Iliad, because he has all
the faculties that the scholar has? Shall we say that man can love
God, if he will? This is false, if will means volition. It is a
truism, if will means affection. The Scriptures never thus address
men and tell them that they have power to do all that God
requires. It is dangerous to teach a man this, for until a man
feels that he can do nothing, God never saves him. Inability is
involved in the doctrine of original sin; in the necessity of the
Spirit’s influence in regeneration. Inability is consistent with
obligation, when inability arises from sin and is removed by the
removal of sin.”

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:213-257, and in South Church Sermons,
33-59—“The origin of this helplessness lies, not in creation, but
in sin. God can command the ten talents or the five which he
originally committed to us, together with a diligent and faithful
improvement of them. Because the servant has lost the talents, is
he discharged from obligation to return them with interest? Sin
contains in itself the element of servitude. In the very act of
transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the
human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less able than before
to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To
do wrong destroys the power to do right. Total depravity carries
with it total impotence. The voluntary faculty may be ruined from
within; may be made impotent to holiness, by its own action; may
surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an
intensity and earnestness, that it becomes unable to convert
itself and overcome its wrong inclination.” See Stevenson, Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,—noticed in Andover Rev., June, 1886:664. We
can merge ourselves in the life of another—either bad or good; can
almost transform ourselves into Satan or into Christ, so as to say
with Paul, in _Gal 2:20_—“_it is no longer I that live, but Christ
liveth in me_”; or be minions of “_the spirit that now worketh in
the sons of disobedience_” (_Eph. 2:2_). But if we yield ourselves
to the influence of Satan, the recovery of our true personality
becomes increasingly difficult, and at last impossible.

There is nothing in literature sadder or more significant than the
self-bewailing of Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, who writes in his
Last Essays, 214—“Could the youth to whom the flavor of the first
wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering of
some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be
made to understand what a dreary thing it is when he shall feel
himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will;
to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it; to see all
goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time
when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his
own ruin,—could he see my fevered eye, fevered with the last
night’s drinking, and feverishly looking for to-night’s repetition
of the folly; could he but feel the body of this death out of
which I cry hourly, with feebler outcry, to be delivered, it were
enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth, in
all the pride of its mantling temptation.”

For the Arminian “gracious ability,” see Raymond, Syst. Theol.,
2:130; McClintock & Strong, Cyclopædia, 10:990. _Per contra_, see
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 2 (1:282); Edwards, Works, 2:464
(Orig. Sin, 3:1); Bennet Tyler, Works, 73; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
523-528; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:567-639; Turretin, 10:4:19;
A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260-269; Thornwell, Theology,
1:394-399; Alexander, Moral Science, 89-208; Princeton Essays,
1:224-239; Richards, Lectures on Theology. On real as
distinguished from formal freedom, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin,
2:1-225. On Augustine’s _lineamenta extrema_ (of the divine image
in man), see Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 119, note. See
also art. by A. H. Strong, on Modified Calvinism, or Remainders of
Freedom in Man, in Bap. Rev., 1883:219-242; and reprinted in the
author’s Philosophy and Religion, 114-128.

II. Guilt.

1. Nature of guilt.

By guilt we mean desert of punishment, or obligation to render
satisfaction to God’s justice for self-determined violation of law. There
is a reaction of holiness against sin, which the Scripture denominates
“the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18). Sin is in us, either as act or state;
God’s punitive righteousness is over against the sinner, as something to
be feared; guilt is a relation of the sinner to that righteousness,
namely, the sinner’s desert of punishment.

Guilt is related to sin as the burnt spot to the blaze. Schiller,
Die Braut von Messina: “Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht;
Der Uebel grösstes aber ist die Schuld”—“Life is not the highest
of possessions; the greatest of ills, however, is guilt.”
Delitzsch: “Die Schamröthe ist die Abendröthe der untergegangenen
Sonne der ursprünglichen Gerechtigkeit”—“The blush of shame is the
evening red after the sun of original righteousness has gone
down.” E. G. Robinson: “Pangs of conscience do not arise from the
fear of penalty,—they are the penalty itself.” See chapter on
Fig-leaves, in McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture,
142-154—“Spiritual shame for sin sought an outward symbol, and
found it in the nakedness of the lower parts of the body.”

The following remarks may serve both for proof and for explanation:

A. Guilt is incurred only through self-determined transgression either on
the part of man’s nature or person. We are guilty only of that sin which
we have originated or have had part in originating. Guilt is not,
therefore, mere liability to punishment, without participation in the
transgression for which the punishment is inflicted,—in other words, there
is no such thing as constructive guilt under the divine government. We are
accounted guilty only for what we have done, either personally or in our
first parents, and for what we are, in consequence of such doing.

_Ez. 18:20_—“_the son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father_”—, as Calvin says (Com. _in loco_): “The son shall not
bear the father’s iniquity, since he shall receive the reward due
to himself, and shall bear his own burden.... All are guilty
through their own fault.... Every one perishes through his own
iniquity.” In other words, the whole race fell in Adam, and is
punished for its own sin in him, not for the sins of immediate
ancestors, nor for the sin of Adam as a person foreign to us.
_John 9:3_—“_Neither did this man sin, nor his parents_” (that he
should be born blind)—Do not attribute to any special later sin
what is a consequence of the sin of the race—the first sin which
“brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:195-213.

B. Guilt is an objective result of sin, and is not to be confounded with
subjective pollution, or depravity. Every sin, whether of nature or
person, is an offense against God (Ps. 51:4-6), an act or state of
opposition to his will, which has for its effect God’s personal wrath (Ps.
7:11; John 3:18, 36), and which must be expiated either by punishment or
by atonement (Heb. 9:22). Not only does sin, as unlikeness to the divine
purity, involve _pollution_,—it also, as antagonism to God’s holy will,
involves _guilt_. This guilt, or obligation to satisfy the outraged
holiness of God, is explained in the New Testament by the terms “debtor”
and “debt” (Mat. 6:12; Luke 13:4; Mat. 5:21; Rom. 3:19; 6:23; Eph. 2:3).
Since guilt, the objective result of sin, is entirely distinct from
depravity, the subjective result, human nature may, as in Christ, have the
guilt without the depravity (2 Cor. 5:21), or may, as in the Christian,
have the depravity without the guilt (1 John 1:7, 8).

_Ps. 51:4-6_—“_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done
that which is evil in thy sight; That thou mayest be justified
when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest_”; _7:11_—“_God
is a righteous judge, Yea, a God that hath indignation every
day_”; _John 3:18_—“_he that believeth not hath been judged
already_”; _36_—“_he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him_”; _Heb. 9:22_—“_apart from
shedding of blood there is no remission_”; _Mat. 6:12_—“_debts_”;
_Luke 13:4_—“_offenders_” (marg. “_debtors_”); _Mat. 5:21_—“_shall
be in danger of_ [exposed to] _the judgment_”; _Rom. 3:19_—“_that
... all the world may be brought under the judgment of God_”;
_6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_”—death is sin’s desert; _Eph.
2:3_—“_by nature children of wrath_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew
no sin he made to be sin on our behalf_”; _1 John 1:7, 8_—“_the
blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin._ [Yet] _If we
say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us._”

Sin brings in its train not only depravity but guilt, not only
_macula_ but _reatus_. Scripture sets forth the _pollution_ of sin
by its similies of “a cage of unclean birds” and of “wounds,
bruises, and putrefying sores”; by leprosy and Levitical
uncleanness, under the old dispensation; by death and the
corruption of the grave, under both the old and the new. But
Scripture sets forth the _guilt_ of sin, with equal vividness, in
the fear of Cain and in the remorse of Judas. The revulsion of
God’s holiness from sin, and its demand for satisfaction, are
reflected in the shame and remorse of every awakened conscience.
There is an instinctive feeling in the sinner’s heart that sin
will be punished, and ought to be punished. But the Holy Spirit
makes this need of reparation so deeply felt that the soul has no
rest until its debt is paid. The offending church member who is
truly penitent loves the law and the church which excludes him,
and would not think it faithful if it did not. So Jesus, when
laden with the guilt of the race, pressed forward to the cross,
saying: “_I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!_” (_Luke 12:50; Mark 10:32_).

All sin involves guilt, and the sinful soul itself demands
penalty, so that all will ultimately go where they most desire to
be. All the great masters in literature have recognized this. The
inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very
essence of tragedy. The Greek tragedians are full of it, and
Shakespeare is its most impressive teacher: Measure for Measure,
5:1—“I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it
in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy;
’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it”; Cymbeline, 5:4—“and so,
great Powers, If you will take this audit, take this life, And
cancel these cold bonds!... Desired, more than constrained, to
satisfy, ... take No stricter render of me than my all”; that is,
settle the account with me by taking my life, for nothing less
than that will pay my debt. And later writers follow Shakespeare.
Marguerite, in Goethe’s Faust, fainting in the great cathedral
under the solemn reverberations of the Dies Iræ; Dimmesdale, in
Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with
Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy; Bulwer’s
Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the
murder he had committed, all these are illustrations of the inner
impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of
justice upon it. See A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 215,
216. On Hawthorne, see Hutton, Essays, 2:370-416—“In the Scarlet
Letter, the minister gains fresh reverence and popularity as the
very fruit of the passionate anguish with which his heart is
consumed. Frantic with the stings of unacknowledged guilt, he is
yet taught by these very stings to understand the hearts and stir
the consciences of others.” See also Dinsmore, Atonement in
Literature and Life.

Nor are such scenes confined to the pages of romance. In a recent
trial at Syracuse, Earl, the wife-murderer, thanked the jury that
had convicted him; declared the verdict just; begged that no one
would interfere to stay the course of justice; said that the
greatest blessing that could be conferred on him would be to let
him suffer the penalty of his crime. In Plattsburg, at the close
of another trial in which the accused was a life-convict who had
struck down a fellow-convict with an axe, the jury, after being
out two hours, came in to ask the Judge to explain the difference
between murder in the first and second degree. Suddenly the
prisoner rose and said: “This was not a murder in the second
degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I
have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I
ought to be hanged.” This left the jury nothing to do but render
their verdict, and the Judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged,
as he confessed he deserved to be. In 1891, Lars Ostendahl, the
most famous preacher of Norway, startled his hearers by publicly
confessing that he had been guilty of immorality, and that he
could no longer retain his pastorate. He begged his people for the
sake of Christ to forgive him and not to desert the poor in his
asylums. He was not only preacher, but also head of a great
philanthropic work.

Such is the movement and demand of the enlightened conscience. The
lack of conviction that crime ought to be punished is one of the
most certain signs of moral decay in either the individual or the
nation (_Ps. 97:10_—“_Ye that love the Lord, hate evil_”;
_149:6_—“_Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a
two-edged sword in their hand_”—to execute God’s judgment upon
iniquity).

This relation of sin to God shows us how Christ is “_made sin on
our behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). Since Christ is the immanent God, he
is also essential humanity, the universal man, the life of the
race. All the nerves and sensibilities of humanity meet in him. He
is the central brain to which and through which all ideas must
pass. He is the central heart to which and through which all pains
must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your friend across
the town without first ringing up the central office. You cannot
injure your neighbor without first injuring Christ. Each one of us
can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps.
51:4_). Because of his central and all-inclusive humanity, Christ
can feel all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully
belong to sinners, but which they cannot feel, because their sin
has stupefied and deadened them. The Messiah, if he be truly man,
must be a suffering Messiah. For the very reason of his humanity
he must bear in his own person all the guilt of humanity and must
be “_the Lamb of God who_” takes, and so “_takes away the sin of
the world_” (_John 1:29_).

Guilt and depravity are not only distinguishable in thought,—they
are also separable in fact. The convicted murderer might repent
and become pure, yet he might still be under obligation to suffer
the punishment of his crime. The Christian is freed from guilt
(_Rom. 8:1_), but he is not yet freed from depravity (_Rom.
7:23_). Christ, on the other hand, was under obligation to suffer
(_Luke 24:26_; _Acts 3:18_; _26:23_), while yet he was without sin
(_Heb. 7:26_). In the book entitled Modern Religious Thought,
3-29, R. J. Campbell has an essay on The Atonement, with which,
apart from its view as to the origin of moral evil in God, we are
in substantial agreement. He holds that “to relieve men from their
sense of guilt, objective atonement is necessary,”—we would say:
to relieve men from guilt itself—the obligation to suffer. “If
Christ be the eternal Son of God, that side of the divine nature
which has gone forth in creation, if he contains humanity and is
present in every article and act of human experience, then he is
associated with the existence of the primordial evil.... He and
only he can sever the entail between man and his responsibility
for personal sin. Christ has not _sinned_ in man, but he takes
responsibility for that experience of evil into which humanity is
born, and the yielding to which constitutes sin. He goes forth to
suffer, and actually does suffer, in man. The eternal Son in whom
humanity is contained is therefore a sufferer since creation
began. This mysterious passion of Deity must continue until
redemption is consummated and humanity restored to God. Thus every
consequence of human ill is felt in the experience of Christ. Thus
Christ not only assumes the guilt but bears the punishment of
every human soul.” We claim however that the necessity of this
suffering lies, not in the needs of man, but in the holiness of
God.

C. Guilt, moreover, as an objective result of sin, is not to be confounded
with the subjective consciousness of guilt (Lev. 5:17). In the
condemnation of conscience, God’s condemnation partially and prophetically
manifests itself (1 John 3:20). But guilt is primarily a relation to God,
and only secondarily a relation to conscience. Progress in sin is marked
by diminished sensitiveness of moral insight and feeling. As “the greatest
of sins is to be conscious of none,” so guilt may be great, just in
proportion to the absence of consciousness of it (Ps. 19:12; 51:6; Eph.
4:18, 19—ἀπηλγηκότες). There is no evidence, however, that the voice of
conscience can be completely or finally silenced. The time for repentance
may pass, but not the time for remorse. Progress in holiness, on the other
hand, is marked by increasing apprehension of the depth and extent of our
sinfulness, while with this apprehension is combined, in a normal
Christian experience, the assurance that the guilt of our sin has been
taken, and taken away, by Christ (John 1:29).

_Lev. 5:17_—“_And if any one sin, and do any of the things which
Jehovah hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet
is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity_”; _1 John
3:20_—“_because if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things_”; _Ps. 19:12_—“_Who can discern his
errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults_”; _51:6_—“_Behold, thou
desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou
wilt make me to know wisdom_”; _Eph. 4:18, 19_—“_darkened in their
understanding ... being past feeling_”; _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the
Lamb of God, that taketh away_ [marg. “_beareth_”] _the sin of the
world._”

Plato, Republic, 1:330—“When death approaches, cares and alarms
awake, especially the fear of hell and its punishments.” Cicero,
De Divin., 1:30—“Then comes remorse for evil deeds.” Persius,
Satire 3—“His vice benumbs him; his fibre has become fat; he is
conscious of no fault; he knows not the loss he suffers; he is so
far sunk, that there is not even a bubble on the surface of the
deep.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1—“Thus conscience doth make cowards
of us all”; 4:5—“To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each
toy seems prologue to some great amiss; So full of artless
jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”;
Richard III, 5:3—“O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict
me!... My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every
tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a
villain”; Tempest, 3:3—“All three of them are desperate; their
great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now
’gins to bite the spirits”; Ant. and Cleop., 3:9—“When we in our
viciousness grow hard (O misery on’t!) the wise gods seel our
eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our
errors; laugh at us, while we strut To our confusion.”

Dr. Shedd said once to a graduating class of young theologians:
“Would that upon the naked, palpitating heart of each one of you
might be laid one redhot coal of God Almighty’s wrath!” Yes, we
add, if only that redhot coal might be quenched by one red drop of
Christ’s atoning blood. Dr. H. E. Robins: “To the convicted sinner
a merely external hell would be a cooling flame, compared with the
agony of his remorse.” John Milton represents Satan as saying:
“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” James Martineau, Life
by Jackson, 190—“It is of the essence of guilty declension to
administer its own anæsthetics.” But this deadening of conscience
cannot last always. Conscience is a mirror of God’s holiness. We
may cover the mirror with the veil of this world’s diversions and
deceits. When the veil is removed, and conscience again reflects
the sunlike purity of God’s demands, we are visited with
self-loathing and self-contempt. John Caird, Fund. Ideas,
2:25—“Though it may cast off every other vestige of its divine
origin, our nature retains at least this one terrible prerogative
of it, the capacity of preying on itself.” Lyttelton in Lux Mundi,
277—“The common fallacy that a self-indulgent sinner is no one’s
enemy but his own would, were it true, involve the further
inference that such a sinner would not feel himself guilty.” If
any dislike the doctrine of guilt, let them remember that without
wrath there is no pardon, without guilt no forgiveness. See, on
the nature of guilt, Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:193-267;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 208-209; Thomasius, Christi Person
und Werk, 1:346; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 461-473; Delitzsch, Bib.
Psychologie, 121-148; Thornwell, Theology, 1:400-424.

2. Degrees of guilt.

The Scriptures recognize different degrees of guilt as attaching to
different kinds of sin. The variety of sacrifices under the Mosaic law,
and the variety of awards in the judgment, are to be explained upon this
principle.

_Luke 12:47, 48_—“_shall be beaten with many stripes ... shall be
beaten with few stripes_”; _Rom. 2:6_—“_who will render to every
man according to his works._” See also _John 19:11_—“_he that
delivered me unto thee hath greater sin_”; _Heb. 2:2, 3_—if
“_every transgression ... received a just recompense of reward;
how shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?_” _10:28,
29_—“_A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without
compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much
sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath
trodden under foot the Son of God?_”

Casuistry, however, has drawn many distinctions which lack Scriptural
foundation. Such is the distinction between venial sins and mortal sins in
the Roman Catholic Church,—every sin unpardoned being mortal, and all sins
being venial, since Christ has died for all. Nor is the common distinction
between sins of omission and sins of commission more valid, since the very
omission is an act of commission.

_Mat. 25:45_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these
least_”; _James 4:17_—“_To him therefore that knoweth to do good,
and doeth it not, to him it is sin._” John Ruskin: “The
condemnation given from the Judgment Throne—most solemnly
described—is for all the ‘undones’ and not the ‘dones.’ People are
perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its
reverse energetically, they _do it all day long_, and the degree
does not matter.” The Roman Catholic Church proceeds upon the
supposition that she can determine the precise malignity of every
offence, and assign its proper penance at the confessional.
Thornwell, Theology, 1:424-441, says that “all sins are venial but
one—for there is a sin against the Holy Ghost,” yet “not one is
venial in itself—for the least proceeds from an apostate state and
nature.” We shall see, however, that the hindrance to pardon, in
the case of the sin against the Holy Spirit, is subjective rather
than objective.

J. Spencer Kennard: “Roman Catholicism in Italy presents the
spectacle of the authoritative representatives and teachers of
morals and religion themselves living in all forms of deceit,
corruption, and tyranny; and, on the other hand, discriminating
between venial and mortal sin, classing as venial sins lying,
fraud, fornication, marital infidelity, and even murder, all of
which may be atoned for and forgiven or even permitted by the mere
payment of money; and at the same time classing as mortal sins
disrespect and disobedience to the church.”

The following distinctions are indicated in Scripture as involving
different degrees of guilt:

A. Sin of nature, and personal transgression.

Sin of nature involves guilt, yet there is greater guilt when this sin of
nature reasserts itself in personal transgression; for, while this latter
includes in itself the former, it also adds to the former a new element,
namely, the conscious exercise of the individual and personal will, by
virtue of which a new decision is made against God, special evil habit is
induced, and the total condition of the soul is made more depraved.
Although we have emphasized the guilt of inborn sin, because this truth is
most contested, it is to be remembered that men reach a conviction of
their native depravity only through a conviction of their personal
transgressions. For this reason, by far the larger part of our preaching
upon sin should consist in applications of the law of God to the acts and
dispositions of men’s lives.

_Mat. 19:14_—“_to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—relative
innocence of childhood; _23:32_—“_Fill ye up then the measure of
your fathers_”—personal transgression added to inherited
depravity. In preaching, we should first treat individual
transgressions, and thence proceed to heart-sin, and race-sin. Man
is not wholly a spontaneous development of inborn tendencies, a
manifestation of original sin. Motives do not _determine_ but they
_persuade_ the will, and every man is guilty of conscious personal
transgressions which may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, be
brought under the condemning judgment of conscience. Birks,
Difficulties of Belief, 169-174—“Original sin does not do away
with the significance of personal transgression. Adam was
pardoned: but some of his descendants are unpardonable. The second
death is referred, in Scripture, to our own personal guilt.”

This is not to say that original sin does not involve as great sin
as that of Adam in the first transgression, for original sin _is_
the sin of the first transgression; it is only to say that
personal transgression is original sin _plus_ the conscious
ratification of Adam’s act by the individual. “We are guilty for
what we _are_, as much as for what we _do_. Our _sin_ is not
simply the sum total of all our _sins_. There is a _sinfulness_
which is the common denominator of all our sins.” It is customary
to speak lightly of original sin, as if personal sins were all for
which man is accountable. But it is only in the light of original
sin that personal sins can be explained. _Prov. 14:9,
marg._—“_Fools make a mock at sin._” Simon, Reconciliation,
122—“The sinfulness of individual men varies; the sinfulness of
humanity is a constant quantity.” Robert Browning, Ferishtah’s
Fancies: “Man lumps his kind i’ the mass. God singles thence unit
by unit. Thou and God exist—So think! for certain: Think the
mass—mankind—Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone! Ask thy
lone soul what laws are plain to thee,—Thou and no other, stand or
fall by them! That is the part for thee.”

B. Sins of ignorance, and sins of knowledge.

Here guilt is measured by the degree of light possessed, or in other
words, by the opportunities of knowledge men have enjoyed, and the powers
with which they have been naturally endowed. Genius and privilege increase
responsibility. The heathen are guilty, but those to whom the oracles of
God have been committed are more guilty than they.

_Mat 10:15_—“_more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the day of judgment, than for that city_”; _Luke 12:47, 48_—“_that
servant, who knew his Lord’s will ... shall be beaten with many
stripes; but he that knew not ... shall be beaten with few
stripes_”; _23:34_—“_Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do_”—complete knowledge would put them beyond the reach of
forgiveness. _John 19:11_—“_he that delivered me unto thee hath
greater sin_”; _Acts 17:30_—“_The times of ignorance therefore God
overlooked_”; _Rom. 1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God,
that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only
do the same, but also consent with them that practise them_”;
_2:12_—“_For as many as have sinned without the law shall also
perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law
shall be judged by the law_”; _1 Tim. 1:13, 15, 16_—“_I obtained
mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief._”

_Is. 42:19_—“_Who is blind ... as Jehovah’s servant?_” It was the
Pharisees whom Jesus warned of the sin against the Holy Spirit.
The guilt of the crucifixion rested on Jews rather than on
Gentiles. Apostate Israel was more guilty than the pagans. The
greatest sinners of the present day may be in Christendom, not in
heathendom. Satan was an archangel; Judas was an apostle;
Alexander Borgia was a pope. Jackson, James Martineau,
362—“Corruptio optimi pessima est, as seen in a drunken Webster, a
treacherous Bacon, a licentious Goethe.” Sir Roger de Coverley
observed that none but men of fine parts deserve to be hanged.
Kaftan, Dogmatik, 317—“The greater sin often involves the lesser
guilt; the lesser sin the greater guilt.” Robert Browning, The
Ring and the Book, 227 (Pope, 1975)—“There’s a new tribunal now
Higher than God’s,—the educated man’s! Nice sense of honor in the
human breast Supersedes here the old coarse oracle!” Dr. H. E.
Robins holds that “palliation of guilt according to light is not
possible under a system of pure law, and is possible only because
the probation of the sinner is a probation of grace.”

C. Sins of infirmity, and sins of presumption.

Here the guilt is measured by the energy of the evil will. Sin may be
known to be sin, yet may be committed in haste or weakness. Though haste
and weakness constitute a palliation of the offence which springs
therefrom, yet they are themselves sins, as revealing an unbelieving and
disordered heart. But of far greater guilt are those presumptuous choices
of evil in which not weakness, but strength of will, is manifest.

_Ps. 19:12, 13_—“_Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy
servant also from presumptuous sins_”; _Is. 5:18_—“_Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were
with a cart-rope_”—not led away insensibly by sin, but earnestly,
perseveringly, and wilfully working away at it; _Gal.
6:1_—“_overtaken in any trespass_”; _1 Tim. 5:24_—“_Some men’s
sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also
they follow after_”—some men’s sins are so open, that they act as
officers to bring to justice those who commit them; whilst others
require after-proof (An. Par. Bible). Luther represents one of the
former class as saying to himself: “Esto peccator, et pecca
fortiter.” On sins of passion and of reflection, see Bittinger, in
Princeton Rev., 1873:219.

_Micah 7:3_, marg.—“_Both hands are put forth for evil, to do it
diligently._” So we ought to do good. “My art is my life,” said
Grisi, the prima donna of the opera, “I save myself all day for
that one bound upon the stage.” H. Bonar: “Sin worketh,—Let me
work too. Busy as sin, my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of
eternity.” German criminal law distinguishes between intentional
homicide without deliberation, and intentional homicide with
deliberation. There are three grades of sin: 1. Sins of ignorance,
like Paul’s persecuting; 2. sins of infirmity, like Peter’s
denial; 3. sins of presumption, like David’s murder of Uriah. Sins
of presumption were unpardonable under the Jewish law; they are
not unpardonable under Christ.

D. Sin of incomplete, and sin of final, obduracy.

Here the guilt is measured, not by the objective sufficiency or
insufficiency of divine grace, but by the degree of unreceptiveness into
which sin has brought the soul. As the only sin unto death which is
described in Scripture is the sin against the Holy Spirit, we here
consider the nature of that sin.

_Mat 12:31_—“_Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men;
but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven_”;
_32_—“_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come_”; _Mark 3:29_—“_whosoever shall
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is
guilty of an eternal sin_”; _1 John 5:16, 17_—“_If any man see his
brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will
give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin
into death: not concerning this do I say that he should make
request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto
death_”; _Heb. 10:26_—“_if we sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth, then remaineth no more a
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment,
and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries._”

Ritschl holds all sin that comes short of definitive rejection of
Christ to be ignorance rather than sin, and to be the object of no
condemning sentence. This is to make the sin against the Holy
Spirit the only real sin. Conscience and Scripture alike
contradict this view. There is much incipient hardening of the
heart that precedes the sin of final obduracy. See Denney, Studies
in Theology, 80. The composure of the criminal is not always a
sign of innocence. S. S. Times, April 12, 1902:200—“Sensitiveness
of conscience and of feeling, and responsiveness of countenance
and bearing, are to be retained by purity of life and freedom from
transgression. On the other hand composure of countenance and
calmness under suspicion and accusation are likely to be a result
of continuance in wrong doing, with consequent hardening of the
whole moral nature.”

Weismann, Heredity, 2:8—“As soon as any organ falls into disuse,
it degenerates, and finally is lost altogether.... In parasites
the organs of sense degenerate.” Marconi’s wireless telegraphy
requires an attuned “receiver.” The “transmitter” sends out
countless rays into space: only one capable of corresponding
vibrations can understand them. The sinner may so destroy his
receptivity, that the whole universe may be uttering God’s truth,
yet he be unable to hear a word of it. The Outlook: “If a man
should put out his eyes, he could not see—nothing could make him
see. So if a man should by obstinate wickedness destroy his power
to believe in God’s forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state.
Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and
so could not take God’s forgiveness to himself.”

The sin against the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded simply as an
isolated act, but also as the external symptom of a heart so radically and
finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will
ever save it. This sin, therefore, can be only the culmination of a long
course of self-hardening and self-depraving. He who has committed it must
be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition, or actively and
bitterly hostile to God; so that anxiety or fear on account of one’s
condition is evidence that it has not been committed. The sin against the
Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, simply because the soul that has committed
it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those
influences are exerted in the utmost strength which God has seen fit to
employ in his spiritual administration.

The commission of this sin is marked by a loss of spiritual sight;
the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave left light for darkness, and so
in time lost their eyes. It is marked by a loss of religious
sensibility; the sensitive-plant loses Its sensitiveness, in
proportion to the frequency with which it is touched. It is marked
by a loss of power to will the good; “the lava hardens after it
has broken from the crater, and in that state cannot return to its
source” (Van Oosterzee). The same writer also remarks (Dogmatics,
2:438): “Herod Antipas, after earlier doubt and slavishness,
reached such deadness as to be able to mock the Savior, at the
mention of whose name he had not long before trembled.” Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:425—“It is not that divine grace is
absolutely refused to any one who in true penitence asks
forgiveness of this sin; but he who commits it never fulfills the
subjective conditions upon which forgiveness is possible, because
the aggravation of sin to this ultimatum destroys in him all
susceptibility of repentance. The way of return to God is closed
against no one who does not close it against himself.” Drummond,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 97-120, illustrates the
downward progress of the sinner by the law of degeneration in the
vegetable and animal world: pigeons, roses, strawberries, all tend
to revert to the primitive and wild type. “_How shall we escape,
if we neglect so great a salvation?_” (_Heb.2:3_).

Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3:5—“You all know security Is mortals’
chiefest enemy.” Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist,
90-124—“Richard III is the ideal villain. Villainy has become an
end in itself. Richard is an artist in villainy. He lacks the
emotions naturally attending crime. He regards villainy with the
intellectual enthusiasm of the artist. His villainy is ideal in
its success. There is a fascination of irresistibility in him. He
is imperturbable in his crime. There is no effort, but rather
humor, in it; a recklessness which suggests boundless resources;
an inspiration which excludes calculation. Shakespeare relieves
the representation from the charge of monstrosity by turning all
this villainous history into the unconscious development of
Nemesis.” See also A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 188-193. Robert
Browning’s Guido, in The Ring and the Book, is an example of pure
hatred of the good. Guido hates Pompilia for her goodness, and
declares that, if he catches her in the next world, he will murder
her there, as he murdered her here.

Alexander VI, the father of Cæsar and Lucrezia Borgia, the pope of
cruelty and lust, wore yet to the day of his death the look of
unfailing joyousness and geniality, yes, of even retiring
sensitiveness and modesty. No fear or reproach of conscience
seemed to throw gloom over his life, as in the cases of Tiberius
and Louis XI. He believed himself under the special protection of
the Virgin, although he had her painted with the features of his
paramour, Julia Farnese. He never scrupled at false witness,
adultery, or murder. See Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, 294, 295.
Jeremy Taylor thus describes the progress of sin in the sinner:
“First it startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then delightful,
then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is
impenitent, then obstinate, then resolved never to repent, then
damned.”

There is a state of utter insensibility to emotions of love or
fear, and man by his sin may reach that state. The act of
blasphemy is only the expression of a hardened or a hateful heart.
B. H. Payne: “The calcium flame will char the steel wire so that
it is no longer affected by the magnet.... As the blazing cinders
and black curling smoke which the volcano spews from its rumbling
throat are the accumulation of months and years, so the sin
against the Holy Spirit is not a thoughtless expression in a
moment of passion or rage, but the giving vent to a state of heart
and mind abounding in the accumulations of weeks and months of
opposition to the gospel.”

Dr. J. P. Thompson: “The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful,
persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning of divine truth and
grace, as manifested to the soul by the convincing and
illuminating power of the Holy Ghost.” Dorner says that “therefore
this sin does not belong to Old Testament times, or to the mere
revelation of law. It implies the full revelation of the grace in
Christ, and the conscious rejection of it by a soul to which the
Spirit has made it manifest (_Acts 17:30_—‘_The times of
ignorance, therefore, God overlooked_’; _Rom. 3:25_—‘_the passing
over of the sins done aforetime_’).” But was it not under the Old
Testament that God said: “_My Spirit shall not strive with man
forever_” (_Gen. 6:3_), and “_Ephraim is joined to idols; let him
alone_” (_Hosea 4:17_)? The sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin
against grace, but it does not appear to be limited to New
Testament times.

It is still true that the unpardonable sin is a sin committed
against the Holy Spirit rather than against Christ: _Mat.
12:32_—“_whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come._” Jesus warns the Jews against it,—he
does not say they had already committed it. They would seem to
have committed it when, after Pentecost, they added to their
rejection of Christ the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s witness to
Christ’s resurrection. See Schaff, Sin against the Holy Ghost;
Lemme, Sünde wider den Heiligen Geist; Davis, in Bap. Rev.,
1862:317-326; Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 283-289. On the general
subject of kinds of sin and degrees of guilt, see Kahnis,
Dogmatik, 3:284, 298.

III. Penalty.

1. Idea of penalty.

By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly
inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the
violation of law.

Turretin, 1:213—“Justice necessarily demands that all sin be
punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in
the very person that sinned, or in just such time and degree.” So
far as this statement of the great Federal theologian is intended
to explain our guilt in Adam and our justification in Christ, we
can assent to his words; but we must add that the reason, in each
case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, and Christ suffers
the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any
covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one
with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer,—in other words,
not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word “penalty,” like
“pain,” is derived from pœna, ποινή, and it implies the
correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there
can be no constructive _guilt_, so there can be no _penalty_
inflicted by legal fiction. Christ’s sufferings were penalty, not
arbitrarily inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt,
but as the just due of the human nature with which he had united
himself, and a part of which he was. Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “Loss,
not suffering, is the supreme penalty for Christians. The real
penalty is separation from God. If such separation involves
suffering, that is a sign of God’s mercy, for where there is life,
there is hope. Suffering is always to be interpreted as an appeal
from God to man.”

In this definition it is implied that:

A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a
part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty
there is a personal element—the holy wrath of the Lawgiver,—which natural
consequences but partially express.

We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences
of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins
are punished, in the deterioration and corruption of the body;
mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of
the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—“_His own iniquities shall take the wicked,
And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin_”—as the hunter
is caught in the toils which he has devised for the wild beast.
Sin is self-detecting and self-tormenting. But this is only half
the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of
natural laws are in danger of forgetting that God is not simply
immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that “_to
fall into the hands of the living God_” (_Heb. 10:31_) is to fall
into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver.
Natural law is only the regular expression of God’s mind and will.
We abhor a person who is foul in body and in speech. There is no
penalty of sin more dreadful than its being an object of
abhorrence to God. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this abominable thing
that I hate!_” Add to this the law of continuity which makes sin
reproduce itself, and the law of conscience which makes sin its
own detecter, judge, and tormentor, and we have sufficient
evidence of God’s wrath against it, apart from any external
inflictions. The divine feeling toward sin is seen in Jesus’
scourging the traffickers in the temple, his denunciation of the
Pharisees, his weeping over Jerusalem, his agony in Gethsemane.
Imagine the feeling of a father toward his daughter’s betrayer,
and God’s feeling toward sin may be faintly understood.

The deed returns to the doer, and character determines
destiny—this law is a revelation of the righteousness of God.
Penalty will vindicate the divine character in the long run,
though not always in time. This is recognized in all religions.
Buddhist priest in Japan: “The evil doer weaves a web around
himself, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon.” Socrates made Circe’s
turning of men into swine a mere parable of the self-brutalizing
influence of sin. In Dante’s Inferno, the punishments are all of
them the sins themselves; hence men are in hell before they die.
Hegel: “Penalty is the other half of crime.” R. W. Emerson:
“Punishment not follows, but accompanies, crime.” Sagebeer, The
Bible in Court, 59—“Corruption is destruction, and the sinner is a
suicide; penalty corresponds with transgression and is the outcome
of it; sin is death in the making; death is sin in the final
infliction.” J. B. Thomas, Baptist Congress, 1901:110—“What
matters it whether I wait by night for the poacher and
deliberately shoot him, or whether I set the pistol so that he
shall be shot by it when he commits the depredation?” Tennyson,
Sea Dreams: “His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of
justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The
prisoner at the bar, ever condemn’d: And that drags down his life:
then comes what comes Hereafter.”

B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the
ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally
secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the
vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a
necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however,
as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon
our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two
erroneous theories which have greatest currency.

(_a_) Penalty is not essentially reformatory.—By this we mean that the
reformation of the offender is not its primary design,—as penalty, it is
not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and
mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences
may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the
penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but
in grace. If reformation follows the infliction of penalty, it is not the
effect of the penalty, but the effect of certain benevolent agencies which
have been provided to turn into a means of good what naturally would be to
the offender only a source of harm.

That the object of penalty is not reformation appears from Scripture,
where punishment is often referred to God’s justice, but never to God’s
love; from the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, to which penalty is
correlative; from the fact that punishment must be vindicative, in order
to be disciplinary, and just, in order to be reformatory; from the fact
that upon this theory punishment would not be just when the sinner was
already reformed or could not be reformed, so that the greater the sin the
less the punishment must be.

Punishment is essentially different from chastisement. The latter
proceeds from love (_Jer. 10:24_—“_correct me, but in measure; not
in thine anger_”; _Heb. 12:6_—“_Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth_”). Punishment proceeds not from love but from
justice—see _Ez. 28:22_—“_I shall have executed judgments in her,
and shall be sanctified in her_”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment, “_I do
not this for your sake, but for my holy name_”; _Heb. 12:29_—“_our
God is a consuming fire_”; _Rev. 15:1, 4_—“_wrath of God ... thou
only art holy ... thy righteous acts have been made manifest_”;
_16:5_—“_Righteous art thou, ... thou Holy One, because thou didst
thus judge_”; _19:2_—“_true and righteous are his judgments; for
he hath judged the great harlot._” So untrue is the saying of Sir
Thomas More’s Utopia: “The end of all punishment is the
destruction of vice, and the saving of men.” Luther: “God has two
rods: one of mercy and goodness; another of anger and fury.”
Chastisement is the former; penalty the latter.

If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime,
without asking about reformation, makes the state the
transgressor; its punishments should be proportioned, not to the
greatness of the crime, but to the sinner’s state; the
death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will
preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would
abolish any final judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the
soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there
is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the
less the punishment; and Satan, the greatest sinner, should have
no punishment at all.

Modern denunciations of capital punishment are often based upon
wrong conceptions of the object of penalty. Opposition to the
doctrine of future punishment would give way, if the opposers
realized what penalty is ordained to secure. Harris, God the
Creator, 2:447, 451—“Punishment is not primarily reformatory; it
educates conscience and vindicates the authority of law.” R. W.
Dale: “It is not necessary to prove that hanging is beneficial to
the person hanged. The theory that society has no right to send a
man to jail, to feed him on bread and water, to make him pick hemp
or work a treadmill, except to reform him, is utterly rotten. He
must deserve to be punished, or else the law has no right to
punish him.” A House of Refuge or a State Industrial School is
primarily a penal institution, for it deprives persons of their
liberty and compels them against their will to labor. This loss
and deprivation on their part cannot be justified except upon the
ground that it is the desert of their wrong doing. Whatever
gracious and philanthropic influences may accompany this
confinement and compulsion, they cannot of themselves explain the
penal element in the institution. If they could, a _habeas corpus_
decree could be sought, and obtained, from any competent court.

God’s treatment of men in this world also combines the elements of
penalty and of chastisement. Suffering is first of all deserved,
and this justifies its infliction. But it is at the beginning
accompanied with all manner of alleviating influences which tend
to draw men back to God. As these gracious influences are
resisted, the punitive element becomes preponderating, and penalty
reflects God’s holiness rather than his love. Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 1-25—“Pain is not the immediate object of
punishment. It must be a means to an end, a moral end, namely,
penitence. But where the depraved man becomes a human tiger, there
punishment must reach its culmination. There is a punishment which
is not restorative. According to the spirit in which punishment is
received, it may be internal or external. All punishment begins as
discipline. It tends to repentance. Its triumph would be the
triumph within. It becomes retributive only as the sinner refuses
to repent. Punishment is only the development of sin. The ideal
penitent condemns himself, identifies himself with righteousness
by accepting penalty. In proportion as penalty fails in its
purpose to produce penitence, it acquires more and more a
retributive character, whose climax is not Calvary but Hell.”

Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 327-333 (quoted in Ritchie,
Darwin, and Hegel, 67)—“Punishment has three characters: It is
retributive, in so far as it falls under the general law that
resistance to the dominant type recoils on the guilty or resistant
creature; it is preventive, in so far as, being a statutory
enactment, it aims at securing the maintenance of the law
irrespective of the individual’s character. But this latter
characteristic is secondary, and the former is comprehended in the
third idea, that of reformation, which is the superior form in
which retribution appears when the type is a mental ideal and is
affected by conscious persons.” Hyslop on Freedom, Responsibility,
and Punishment, in Mind, April, 1894:167-189—“In the Elmira
Reformatory, out of 2295 persons paroled between 1876 and 1889,
1907 or 83 per cent. represent a probably complete reformation.
Determinists say that this class of persons cannot do otherwise.
Something is wrong with their theory. We conclude that 1. Causal
responsibility justifies preventive punishment; 2. Potential moral
responsibility justifies corrective punishment; 3. Actual moral
responsibility justifies retributive punishment.” Here we need
only to point out the incorrect use of the word “punishment,”
which belongs only to the last class. In the two former cases the
word “chastisement” should have been used. See Julius Müller,
Lehre von der Sünde, 1:334; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 70-73;
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:238, 239 (Syst. Doct., 3:134,135);
Robertson’s Sermons, 4th Series, no. 18 (Harper’s ed., 752); see
also this Compendium, references on Holiness, A. (_d_), page 273.

(_b_) Penalty is not essentially deterrent and preventive.—By this we mean
that its primary design is not to protect society, by deterring men from
the commission of like offences. We grant that this end is often secured
in connection with punishment, both in family and civil government and
under the government of God. But we claim that this is a merely incidental
result, which God’s wisdom and goodness have connected with the infliction
of penalty,—it cannot be the reason and ground for penalty itself. Some of
the objections to the preceding theory apply also to this. But in addition
to what has been said, we urge:

Penalty cannot be primarily designed to secure social and governmental
safety, for the reason that it is never right to punish the individual
simply for the good of society. No punishment, moreover, will or can do
good to others that is not just and right in itself. Punishment does good,
only when the person punished deserves punishment; and that _desert_ of
punishment, and not the good effects that will follow it, must be the
ground and reason why it is inflicted. The contrary theory would imply
that the criminal might go free but for the effect of his punishment on
others, and that man might rightly commit crime if only he were willing to
bear the penalty.

Kant, Praktische Vernunft, 151 (ed. Rosenkranz)—“The notion of
ill-desert and punishableness is necessarily implied in the idea
of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes
that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts
punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to
produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet
the punishment must be justified first of all as pure and simple
requital and retribution.... In every punishment as such, justice
is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A
benevolent purpose, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment;
but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right
to reckon on it.” These utterances of Kant apply to the deterrent
theory as well as to the reformatory theory of penalty. The
element of desert or retribution is the basis of the other
elements in punishment. See James Seth, Ethical Principles,
333-338; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:717; Hodge, Essays, 133.

A certain English judge, in sentencing a criminal, said that he
punished him, not for stealing sheep, but that sheep might not be
stolen. But it is the greatest injustice to punish a man for the
mere sake of example. Society cannot be benefited by such
injustice. The theory can give no reason why one should be
punished rather than another, nor why a second offence should be
punished more heavily than the first. On this theory, moreover, if
there were but one creature in the universe, and none existed
beside himself to be affected by his suffering, he could not
justly be punished, however great might be his sin. The only
principle that can explain punishment is the principle of
_desert_. See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:348.

“Crime is most prevented by the conviction that crime deserves
punishment; the greatest deterrent agency is conscience.” So in
the government of God “there is no hint that future punishment
works good to the lost or to the universe. The integrity of the
redeemed is not to be maintained by subjecting the lost to a
punishment they do not deserve. The wrong merits punishment, and
God is bound to punish it, whether good comes of it or not. Sin is
intrinsically ill-deserving. Impurity must be banished from God.
God must vindicate himself, or cease to be holy” (see art. on the
Philosophy of Punishment, by F. L. Patton, in Brit. and For.
Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:126-139).

Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 186, 274—Those who maintain
punishment to be essentially deterrent and preventive “ignore the
metaphysics of responsibility and treat the problem ‘positively
and objectively’ on the basis of physiology, sociology, etc., and
in the interests of public safety. The question of guilt or
innocence is as irrelevant as the question concerning the guilt or
innocence of wasps and hornets. An ancient holder of this view set
forth the opinion that ‘_it was expedient that one man should die
for the people_’ (_John 18:14_), and so Jesus was put to death....
A mob in eastern Europe might be persuaded that a Jew had
slaughtered a Christian child as a sacrifice. The authorities
might be perfectly sure of the man’s innocence, and yet proceed to
punish him because of the mob’s clamor, and the danger of an
outbreak.” Men high up in the French government thought it was
better that Dreyfus should suffer for the sake of France, than
that a scandal affecting the honor of the French army should be
made public. In perfect consistency with this principle, McKim,
Heredity and Human Progress, 192, advocates infliction of painless
death upon idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards,
insane criminals, murderers, nocturnal house breakers, and all
dangerous and incorrigible persons. He would change the place of
slaughter from our streets and homes to our penal institutions; in
other words, he would abandon punishment, but protect society.

Failure to recognize holiness as the fundamental attribute of God,
and the affirmation of that holiness as conditioning the exercise
of love, vitiates the discussion of penalty by A. H. Bradford, Age
of Faith, 243-250—“What is penal suffering designed to accomplish?
Is it to manifest the holiness of God? Is it to express the
sanctity of the moral law? Is it simply a natural consequence?
Does it manifest the divine Fatherhood? God does not inflict
penalty simply to satisfy himself or to manifest his holiness, any
more than an earthly father inflicts suffering on his child to
show his wrath against the wrongdoer or to manifest his own
goodness. The idea of punishment is essentially barbaric and
foreign to all that is known of the Deity. Penalty that is not
reformatory or protective is barbarism. In the home, punishment is
always discipline. Its object is the welfare of the child and the
family. Punishment as an expression of wrath or enmity, with no
remedial purpose beyond, is a relic of barbarism. It carries with
it the content of vengeance. It is the expression of anger, of
passion, or at best of cold justice. Penal suffering is
undoubtedly the divine holiness expressing its hatred of sin. But,
if it stops with such expression, it is not holiness, but
selfishness. If on the other hand that expression of holiness is
used or permitted in order that the sinner may be made to hate his
sin, then it is no more punishment, but chastisement. On any other
hypothesis, penal suffering has no justification except the
arbitrary will of the Almighty, and such a hypothesis is an
impeachment both of his justice and his love.” This view seems to
us to ignore the necessary reaction of divine holiness against
sin; to make holiness a mere form of love; a means to an end and
that end utilitarian; and so to deny to holiness any independent,
or even real, existence in the divine nature.

The wrath of God is calm and judicial, devoid of all passion or
caprice, but it is the expression of eternal and unchangeable
righteousness. It is vindicative but not vindictive. Without it
there could be no government, and God would not be God. F. W.
Robertson: “Does not the element of vengeance exist in all
punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but
as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath
in God.” Lord Bacon: “Revenge is a wild sort of justice.” Stephen:
“Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of
revenge.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:287. _Per contra_, see Bib.
Sac., Apr. 1881:286-302; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46, 47;
Chitty’s ed. of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 4:7; Wharton, Criminal
Law, vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 1.

2. The actual penalty of sin.

The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is
“death.” Death, however, is twofold:

A. Physical death,—or the separation of the soul from the body, including
all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of
the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of
death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:

(_a_) From Scripture.

This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2:17—“thou
shalt surely die”; _cf._ 3:19—“unto dust shalt thou return.” Allusions to
this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16:29—“visited
after the visitation of all men,” where פקד = judicial visitation, or
punishment; 27:3 (LXX.—δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν αὐτοῦ). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90:
7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38:17, 18, recognize plainly
the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as
for example, John 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial
phraseology is to be noted (_cf._ 1:32); see 6:23 also. In 1 Pet. 4:6,
physical death is spoken of as God’s judgment against sin. In 1 Cor.
15:21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is
contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:9,
10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3:13, show that Christ submitted to physical death
as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof
that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was
justified. “As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption,
so the death of the body is a part of the penalty.”

_Ps. 90:7, 9_—“_we are consumed in thine anger ... all our days
are passed away in thy wrath_”; _Is. 38:17, 18_—“_thou hast in
love to my soul delivered it from the pit ... thou hast cast all
my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee_”; _John
8:44_—“_He_ [Satan] _was a murderer from the beginning_”;
_11:33_—Jesus “_groaned in the spirit_” = was moved with
indignation at what sin had wrought; _Rom. 5:12, 14, 16,
17_—“_death through sin ... death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned ... death reigned ... even over them that had not
sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression ... the judgment
came of one_ [trespass] _unto condemnation ... by the trespass of
the one, death reigned through the one_”; _cf._ the legal
phraseology in _1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God, that
they that practise such things are worthy of death._” _Rom.
6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_” = death is sin’s just due. _1
Pet. 4:6_—“_that they might be judged indeed according to men in
the flesh_” = that they might suffer physical death, which to men
in general is the penalty of sin. _1 Cor. 15:21, 22_—“_as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Rom. 4:24,
25_—“_raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up
for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification_”; _6:9,
10_—“_Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no
more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died
unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God_”;
_8:3, 10, 11_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ... the body is dead
because of sin_” (= a corpse, on account of sin—Meyer; so Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:291) ... “_he that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies_”; _Gal.
3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having
become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that
hangeth on a tree._”

On the relation between death and sin, see Griffith-Jones, Ascent
through Christ, 169-185—“They are not antagonistic, but
complementary to each other—the one spiritual and the other
biological. The natural fact is fitted to a moral use.” Savage,
Life after Death, 33—“Men did not at first believe in natural
death. If a man died, it was because some one had killed him. No
ethical reason was desired or needed. At last however they sought
some moral explanation, and came to look upon death as a
punishment for human sin.” If this has been the course of human
evolution, we should conclude that the later belief represents the
truth rather than the earlier. Scripture certainly affirms the
doctrine that death itself, and not the mere accompaniments of
death, is the consequence and penalty of sin. For this reason we
cannot accept the very attractive and plausible theory which we
have now to mention:

Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, holds that as the bow
in the cloud was appointed for a moral use, so death, which before
had been simply the natural law of the creation, was on occasion
of man’s sin appointed for a moral use. It is this _acquired_
moral character of death with which Biblical Genesis has to do.
Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have
not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption
takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect,
or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal
but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin.
When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and
will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature’s
method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the
greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. It is God’s way of
securing the greatest possible number and variety of immortal
beings. There are many schoolrooms for eternity in God’s universe,
and a ceaseless succession of scholars through them. There are
many folds, but one flock. The reaper Death keeps making room.
Four or five generations are as many as we can individually love,
and get moral stimulus from.

Methuselahs too many would hold back the new generations. Bagehot
says that civilization needs first to form a cake of custom, and
secondly to break it up. Death, says Martineau, Study, 1:372-374,
is the provision for taking us abroad, before we have stayed too
long at home to lose our receptivity. Death is the liberator of
souls. The death of successive generations gives variety to
heaven. Death perfects love, reveals it to itself, unites as life
could not. As for Christ, so for us, it is expedient that we
should go away.

While we welcome this reasoning as showing how God has overruled
evil for good, we regard the explanation as unscriptural and
unsatisfactory, for the reason that it takes no account of the
ethics of natural law. The law of death is an expression of the
nature of God, and specially of his holy wrath against sin. Other
methods of propagating the race and reinforcing its life could
have been adopted than that which involves pain and suffering and
death. These do not exist in the future life,—they would not exist
here, if it were not for the fact of sin. Dr. Smyth shows how the
evil of death has been overruled,—he has not shown the reason for
the original existence of the evil. The Scriptures explain this as
the penalty and stigma which God has attached to sin: _Psalm 90:7,
8_ makes this plain: “_For we are consumed in thine anger, And in
thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before
thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance._” The whole
psalm has for its theme: Death as the wages of sin. And this is
the teaching of Paul, in _Rom. 5:12_—“_through one man sin entered
into the world, and death through sin._”

(_b_) From reason.

The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures
cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition
that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of
nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.

The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall
may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man’s sin, it would
not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic
history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (_cf._ Rom.
8:20-23—where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by
reason of man’s sin).

On _Rom. 8:20-23_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity, not of
its own will_”—see Meyer’s Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143; also _Gen.
3:17-19_—“_cursed is the ground for thy sake._” See also note on
the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God,
and references, pages 402, 403. As the vertebral structure of the
first fish was an “anticipative consequence” of man, so the
suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other fish
were an “anticipative consequence” of man’s foreseen war with God
and with himself.

The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at
Christ’s second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a
necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to
Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a “natural,” “earthly” body,
but might have attained a higher being, the “spiritual,” “heavenly” body,
without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal
condition of things into the rare exception (_cf._ 1 Cor. 15:42-50). Since
Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes
the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see
references below).

Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few
who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who
shall be alive at Christ’s second coming. Enoch and Elijah were
possible types of those surviving saints. On _1 Cor. 15:51_—“_We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,_” see Edward
Irving, Works, 5:135. The apocryphal Assumption of Moses, verse 9,
tells us that Joshua, being carried in vision to the spot at the
moment of Moses’ decease, beheld a double Moses, one dropped into
the grave as belonging to the earth, the other mingling with the
angels. The belief in Moses’ immortality was not conditioned upon
any resuscitation of the earthly corpse; see Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 364. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, it
may have been a temporary translation of the disembodied spirit.
Set free for a brief space from the prison house which confined
it, it may have passed within the veil and have seen and heard
what mortal tongue could not describe; see Luckock, Intermediate
State, 4. So Lazarus probably could not tell what he saw: “He told
it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist”; see
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi.

Nicoll, Life of Christ: “We have every one of us to face the last
enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered it
sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battle has always
ended in one way. Two indeed escaped, but they did not escape by
meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away
from the battle.” But this physical death, for the Christian, has
been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be
still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted
body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although
it has ceased to be penalty. Macaulay: “The aged prisoner’s chains
are needed to support him; the darkness that has weakened his
sight is necessary to preserve it.” So spiritual death is not
wholly removed from the Christian; a part of it, namely,
depravity, still remains; yet it has ceased to be punishment,—it
is only chastisement. When the finger unties the ligature that
bound it, the body which previously had only chastised begins to
cure the trouble. There is still pain, but the pain is no longer
punitive,—it is now remedial. In the midst of the whipping, when
the boy repents, his punishment is changed to chastisement.

_John 14:3_—“_And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come
again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye
may be also_”; _1 Cor. 15:54-57_—“_Death is swallowed up in
victory ... O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin; and the power of sin is the law_”—_i. e._, the law’s
condemnation, its penal infliction; _2 Cor. 5:1-9_—“_For we know
that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a
building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are
willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with
the Lord_”; _Phil. 1:21, 23_—“_to die is gain ... having the
desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better._”
In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has
broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved
from corporate evil so far as it is punishment. The Christian may
be chastised, but he is never punished: _Rom. 8:1_—“_There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus._”
At the house of Jairus Jesus said: “_Why make ye a tumult, and
weep?_” and having reproved the doleful clamorists, “_he put them
all forth_” (_Mark 5:39, 40_). The wakes and requiems and masses
and vigils of the churches of Rome and of Russia are all heathen
relics, entirely foreign to Christianity.

Palmer, Theological Definition, 57—“Death feared and fought
against is terrible; but a welcome to death is the death of death
and the way to life.” The idea that punishment yet remains for the
Christian is “the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial
fires.” Browning’s words, in The Ring and the Book, 2:60—“In His
face is light, but in his shadow healing too,” are applicable to
God’s fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On
_Acts 7:60_—“_he fell asleep_”—Arnot remarks: “When death becomes
the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is
called sleep.” Another has said: “Christ did not send, but came
himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave;
Christ _died_, the shepherd for the sheep; We only _fall asleep_.”
_Per contra_, see Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 375, and
Hengstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864:1065—“All suffering is punishment.”

B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all
that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result
from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.

(_a_) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no
means the chief part. The term “death” is frequently used in Scripture in
a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which
constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of
God.

_Mat. 8:22_—“_Follow me; and leave the_ [spiritually] _dead to
bury their own_ [physically] _dead_”; _Luke 15:32_—“_this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again_”; _John 5:24_—“_He that
heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal
life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death
into life_”; _8:51_—“_If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death_”; _Rom. 8:13_—“_if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye
shall live_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_when ye were dead through your
trespasses and sins_”; _5:14_—“_Awake, thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead_”; _1 Tim. 5:6_—“_she that giveth herself to
pleasure is dead while __ she liveth_”; _James 5:20_—“_he who
converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul
from death_”; _1 John 3:14_—“_He that loveth not abideth in
death_”; _Rev. 3:1_—“_thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou
art dead._”

(_b_) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and
fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which
consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully
visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen.
2:17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11:26).
For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12-21),
the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early
part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its
close (verse 21—“as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord”—where “eternal life” is more than endless physical existence, and
“death” is more than death of the body).

_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die_”; _John 11:26_—“_whosoever liveth and believeth on me
shall never die_”; _Rom. 5:14, 18, 21_—“_justification of life ...
eternal life_”; contrast these with “_death reigned ... sin
reigned in death._”

(_c_) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of
spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of
the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1:25).
It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the
divine holiness (Mat. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive
retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of
the evil-doer (Mat. 10:28; Heb. 10:31; Rev. 14:11).

_Acts 1:25_—“_Judas fell away, that he might go to his own
place_”; _Mat. 25:41_—“_Depart from me, ye cursed, into the
eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels_”; _2
Thess. 1:9_—“_who shall suffer punishment, even eternal
destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his
might_”; _Mat. 10:28_—“_fear him who is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell_”; _Heb. 10:31_—“_It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God_”; _Rev. 14:11_—“_the smoke of
their torment goeth up for ever and ever._”

Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—“So long as God is holy, he must
maintain the order of the world, and where this is destroyed,
restore it. This however can happen in no other way than this: the
injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world
falls back upon himself,—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation
of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the
reëstablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against
the law. Penalty is the adverse thrust of the elastic because
living law, which encounters the sinner.”

Plato, Gorgias, 472 E; 509 B; 511 A; 515 B—“Impunity is a more
dreadful curse than any punishment, and nothing so good can befall
the criminal as his retribution, the failure of which would make a
double disorder in the universe. The offender himself may spend
his arts in devices of escape and think himself happy if he is not
found out. But all this plotting is but part of the delusion of
his sin; and when he comes to himself and sees his transgression
as it really is, he will yield himself up the prisoner of eternal
justice and know that it is good for him to be afflicted, and so
for the first time to be set at one with truth.”

On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius Müller,
Doct. Sin, 1:245 _sq._; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
263-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe,
Lehre von der Sünde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studien und Kritiken,
1836:371; S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New
Englander, Oct. 1871:677, 678.

Section VII.—The Salvation Of Infants.

The views which have been presented with regard to inborn depravity and
the reaction of divine holiness against it suggest the question whether
infants dying before arriving at moral consciousness are saved, and if so,
in what way. To this question we reply as follows:

(_a_) Infants are in a state of sin, need to be regenerated, and can be
saved only through Christ.

_Job 14:4_—“_Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not
one_”; _Ps. 51:5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And
in sin did my mother conceive me_”; _John 3:6_—“_That which is
born of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom. 5:14_—“_Nevertheless death
reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned
after the likeness of Adam’s transgression_”; _Eph. 2:3_—“_by
nature children of wrath_”; _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your
children unclean_”—clearly intimate the naturally impure state of
infants; and _Mat. 19:14_—“_Suffer the little children, and forbid
them not, to come unto me_”—is not only consistent with this
doctrine, but strongly confirms it; for the meaning is: “_forbid
them not to come unto me_”—whom they need as a Savior. “Coming to
Christ” is always the coming of a sinner, to him who is the
sacrifice for sin; _cf._ _Mat. 11:28_—“_Come unto me, all ye that
labor._”

(_b_) Yet as compared with those who have personally transgressed, they
are recognized as possessed of a relative innocence, and of a
submissiveness and trustfulness, which may serve to illustrate the graces
of Christian character.

_Deut 1:39_—“_your little ones ... and your children, that this
day have no knowledge of good or evil_”; _Jonah 4:11_—“_sixscore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and
their left hand_”; _Rom. 9:11_—“_for the children being not yet
born, neither having done anything good or bad_”; _Mat. 18:3,
4_—“_Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall
humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven._” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:265.
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:50—“Unpretentious receptivity, ... not
the reception of the kingdom of God at a childlike _age_, but in a
childlike _character_ ... is the condition of entering; ... not
blamelessness, but receptivity itself, on the part of those who do
not regard themselves as too good or too bad for the offered gift,
but receive it with hearty desire. Children have this
unpretentious receptivity for the kingdom of God which is
characteristic of them generally, since they have not yet other
possessions on which they pride themselves.”

(_c_) For this reason, they are the objects of special divine compassion
and care, and through the grace of Christ are certain of salvation.

_Mat. 18:5, 6, 10, 14_—“_whoso shall receive one such little child
in my name receiveth me: but whoso shall cause one of these little
ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that
a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he
should be sunk in the depth of the sea.... See that ye despise not
one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven....
Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that
one of these little ones should perish_”; _19:14_—“_Suffer the
little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such
belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—not God’s kingdom of nature, but
his kingdom of grace, the kingdom of saved sinners. “Such” means,
not children as children, but childlike believers. Meyer, on _Mat.
19:14_, refers the passage to spiritual infants only: “Not little
children,” he says, “but men of a childlike disposition.” Geikie:
“Let the little children come unto me, and do not forbid them, for
the kingdom of heaven is given only to such as have a childlike
spirit and nature like theirs.” The Savior’s words do not intimate
that little children are either (1) sinless creatures, or (2)
subjects for baptism; but only that their (1) humble
teachableness, (2) intense eagerness, and (3) artless trust,
illustrate the traits necessary for admission into the divine
kingdom. On the passages in Matthew, see Commentaries of Bengel,
De Wette, Lange; also Neander, Planting and Training (ed.
Robinson), 407.

We therefore substantially agree with Dr. A. C. Kendrick, in his
article in the Sunday School Times: “To infants and children, as
such, the language cannot apply. It must be taken figuratively,
and must refer to those qualities in childhood, its dependence,
its trustfulness, its tender affection, its loving obedience,
which are typical of the essential Christian graces.... If asked
after the _logic_ of our Savior’s words—how he could assign, as a
reason for allowing _literal_ little children to be brought to
him, that _spiritual_ little children have a claim to the kingdom
of heaven—I reply: the persons that thus, as a class, typify the
subjects of God’s spiritual kingdom cannot be in themselves
objects of indifference to him, or be regarded otherwise than with
intense interest.... The class that in its very nature thus
shadows forth the brightest features of Christian excellence must
be subjects of God’s special concern and care.”

To these remarks of Dr. Kendrick we would add, that Jesus’ words
seem to us to intimate more than special concern and care. While
these words seem intended to exclude all idea that infants are
saved by their natural holiness, or without application to them of
the blessings of his atonement, they also seem to us to include
infants among the number of those who have the right to these
blessings; in other words, Christ’s concern and care go so far as
to choose infants to eternal life, and to make them subjects of
the kingdom of heaven. _Cf._ _Mat. 18:14_—“_it is not the will of
your Father who is in heaven, that one of those little ones should
perish_”—those whom Christ has received here, he will not reject
hereafter. Of course this to said to infants, as infants. To
those, therefore, who die before coming to moral consciousness,
Christ’s words assure salvation. Personal transgression, however,
involves the necessity, before death, of a personal repentance and
faith, in order to achieve salvation.

(_d_) The descriptions of God’s merciful provision as coëxtensive with the
ruin of the Fall also lead us to believe that those who die in infancy
receive salvation through Christ as certainly as they inherit sin from
Adam.

_John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world_”—includes infants. _Rom.
5:14_—“_death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that
had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is
a figure of him that was to come_”—there is an application to
infants of the life in Christ, as there was an application to them
of the death in Adam; _19-21_—“_For as through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the
obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law
came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but when sin
abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned
in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord_”—as without personal
act of theirs infants inherited corruption from Adam, so without
personal act of theirs salvation is provided for them in Christ.

Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 170, 171—“Though the sacred writers say
nothing in respect to the future condition of those who die in
infancy, one can scarcely err in deriving from this silence a
favorable conclusion. That no prophet or apostle, that no devout
father or mother, should have expressed any solicitude as to those
who die before they are able to discern good from evil is
surprising, unless such solicitude was prevented by the Spirit of
God. There are no instances of prayer for children taken away in
infancy. The Savior nowhere teaches that they are in danger of
being lost. We therefore heartily and confidently believe that
they are redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by his
Spirit, so that when they enter the unseen world they will be
found with the saints.” David ceased to fast and weep when his
child died, for he said: “_I shall go to him, but he will not
return to me_” (_2 Sam. 12:23_).

(_e_) The condition of salvation for adults is personal faith. Infants are
incapable of fulfilling this condition. Since Christ has died for all, we
have reason to believe that provision is made for their reception of
Christ in some other way.

_2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he died for all_”; _Mark 16:16_—“_He that
believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth
shall be condemned_” (_verses 9-20_ are of canonical authority,
though probably not written by Mark). Dr. G. W. Northrop held
that, as death to the Christian has ceased to be penalty, so death
to all infants is no longer penalty, Christ having atoned for and
removed the guilt of original sin for all men, infants included.
But we reply that there is no evidence that there is any guilt
taken away except for those who come into vital union with Christ.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 166—“The curse falls alike on
every one by birth, but may be alleviated or intensified by every
one who comes to years of responsibility, according as his nature
which brings the curse rules, or is ruled by, his reason and
conscience. So the blessings of salvation are procured for all
alike, but may be lost or secured according to the attitude of
everyone toward Christ who alone procures them. To infants, as the
curse comes without their election, so in like manner comes its
removal.”

(_f_) At the final judgment, personal conduct is made the test of
character. But infants are incapable of personal transgression. We have
reason, therefore, to believe that they will be among the saved, since
this rule of decision will not apply to them.

_Mat. 25:45, 46_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these
least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal
punishment_”; _Rom. 2:5, 6_—“_the day of wrath and revelation of
the righteous judgment of God; who __ will render to every man
according to his works._” Norman Fox, The Unfolding of Baptist
Doctrine, 24—“Not only the Roman Catholics believed in the
damnation of infants. The Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession,
condemn the Baptists for affirming that children are saved without
baptism—‘damnant Anabaptistas qui ... affirmant pueros sine
baptismo salvos fieri’—and the favorite poet of Presbyterian
Scotland, in his Tam O’Shanter, names among objects from hell ‘Twa
span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns.’ The Westminster Confession,
in declaring that ‘elect infants dying in infancy’ are saved,
implies that non-elect infants dying in infancy are lost. This was
certainly taught by some of the framers of that creed.”

Yet John Calvin did not believe in the damnation of infants, as he
has been charged with believing. In the Amsterdam edition of his
works, 8:522, we read: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the
Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret
operation of the Holy Spirit.” In his Institutes, book 4, chap.
16, p. 335, he speaks of the exemption of infants from the grace
of salvation “as an idea not free from execrable blasphemy.” The
Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct. 1890:634-651, quotes Calvin as follows:
“I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish
except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless
mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from
their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be
universally detested.” So also John Owen, Works, 8:522—“There are
two ways by which God saveth infants. First, by interesting them
in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been
believers; ... Secondly, by his grace of election, which is most
free and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but
God taketh unto him in Christ many whose parents never knew, or
were despisers of, the gospel.”

(_g_) Since there is no evidence that children dying in infancy are
regenerated prior to death, either with or without the use of external
means, it seems most probable that the work of regeneration may be
performed by the Spirit in connection with the infant soul’s first view of
Christ in the other world. As the remains of natural depravity in the
Christian are eradicated, not by death, but at death, through the sight of
Christ and union with him, so the first moment of consciousness for the
infant may be coincident with a view of Christ the Savior which
accomplishes the entire sanctification of its nature.

_2 Cor. 3:18_—“_But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as from the Lord the Spirit_”; _1 John 3:2_—“_We know that,
if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see
him as he is._” If asked why more is not said upon the subject in
Scripture, we reply: It is according to the analogy of God’s
general method to hide things that are not of immediate practical
value. In some past ages, moreover, knowledge of the fact that all
children dying in infancy are saved might have seemed to make
infanticide a virtue.

While we agree with the following writers as to the salvation of
all infants who die before the age of conscious and wilful
transgression, we dissent from the seemingly Arminian tendency of
the explanation which they suggest. H. E. Robins, Harmony of
Ethics with Theology: “The judicial declaration of acquittal on
the ground of the death of Christ which comes upon all men, into
the benefits of which they are introduced by natural birth, is
inchoate justification, and will become perfected justification
through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, unless the working of
this divine agent is resisted by the personal moral action of
those who are lost.” So William Ashmore, in Christian Review,
26:245-264. F. O. Dickey: “As infants are members of the race, and
as they are justified from the penalty against inherited sin by
the mediatorial work of Christ, so the race itself is justified
from the same penalty and to the same extent as are they, and were
the race to die in infancy it would be saved.” The truth in the
above utterances seems to us to be that Christ’s union with the
race secures the objective reconciliation of the race to God. But
subjective and personal reconciliation depends upon a moral union
with Christ which can be accomplished for the infant only by his
own appropriation of Christ at death.

While, in the nature of things and by the express declarations of
Scripture, we are precluded from extending this doctrine of regeneration
at death to any who have committed personal sins, we are nevertheless
warranted in the conclusion that, certain and great as is the guilt of
original sin, no human soul is eternally condemned solely for this sin of
nature, but that, on the other hand, all who have not consciously and
wilfully transgressed are made partakers of Christ’s salvation.

The advocates of a second probation, on the other hand, should
logically hold that infants in the next world are in a state of
sin, and that at death they only enter upon a period of probation
in which they may, or may not, accept Christ,—a doctrine much less
comforting than that propounded above. See Prentiss, in Presb.
Rev., July, 1883: 548-580—“Lyman Beecher and Charles Hodge first
made current in this country the doctrine of the salvation of all
who die in infancy. If this doctrine be accepted, then it follows:
(1) that these partakers of original sin must be saved wholly
through divine grace and power; (2) that in the child unborn there
is the promise and potency of complete spiritual manhood; (3) that
salvation is possible entirely apart from the visible church and
the means of grace; (4) that to a full half of the race this life
is not in any way a period of probation; (5) that heathen may be
saved who have never even heard of the gospel; (6) that the
providence of God includes in its scope both infants and heathen.”

“Children exert a redeeming and reclaiming influence upon us,
their casual acts and words and simple trust recalling our
world-hardened and wayward hearts again to the feet of God. Silas
Marner, the old weaver of Raveloe, so pathetically and vividly
described in George Eliot’s novel, was a hard, desolate, godless
old miser, but after little Eppie strayed into his miserable
cottage that memorable winter night, he began again to believe. ‘I
think now,’ he said at last, ‘I can trusten God until I die.’ An
incident in a Southern hospital illustrates the power of children
to call men to repentance. A little girl was to undergo a
dangerous operation. When she mounted the table, and the doctor
was about to etherize her, he said: ‘Before we can make you well,
we must put you to sleep.’ ‘Oh then, if you are going to put me to
sleep,’ she sweetly said, ‘I must say my prayers first.’ Then,
getting down on her knees, and folding her hands, she repeated
that lovely prayer learned at every true mother’s feet: ‘Now I lay
me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Just for a
moment there were moist eyes in that group, for deep chords were
touched, and the surgeon afterwards said: ‘I prayed that night for
the first time in thirty years.’ ” The child that is old enough to
sin against God is old enough to trust in Christ as the Savior of
sinners. See Van Dyke, Christ and Little Children; Whitsitt and
Warfield, Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation; Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 1:26, 27; Ridgeley, Body of Div., 1:422-425; Calvin,
Institutes, II, i, 8; Westminster Larger Catechism, x, 3; Krauth,
Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System; Candlish on Atonement,
part ii, chap. 1; Geo. P. Fisher, in New Englander, Apr. 1868:338;
J. F. Clarke, Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy, 360.

PART VI. SOTERIOLOGY, OR THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION THROUGH THE WORK OF
CHRIST AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ.

Section I.—Historical Preparation For Redemption.

Since God had from eternity determined to redeem mankind, the history of
the race from the time of the Fall to the coming of Christ was
providentially arranged to prepare the way for this redemption. The
preparation was two-fold:

I. Negative Preparation,—in the history of the heathen world.

This showed (1) the true nature of sin, and the depth of spiritual
ignorance and of moral depravity to which the race, left to itself, must
fall; and (2) the powerlessness of human nature to preserve or regain an
adequate knowledge of God, or to deliver itself from sin by philosophy or
art.

Why could not Eve have been the mother of the chosen seed, as she
doubtless at the first supposed that she was? (_Gen. 4:1_—“_and
she conceived, and bare Cain_ [_i. e._, “gotten”, or “acquired”],
_and said, I have gotten a man, even Jehovah_”). Why was not the
cross set up at the gates of Eden? Scripture intimates that a
preparation was needful (_Gal 4:4_—“_but when the fulness of the
time came, God hath sent forth his Son_”). Of the two agencies
made use of, we have called heathenism the negative preparation.
But it was not wholly negative; it was partly positive also.
Justin Martyr spoke of a Λόγος σπερματικός among the heathen.
Clement of Alexandria called Plato a Μωσῆς ἀττικίζων—a
Greek-speaking Moses. Notice the priestly attitude of Pythagoras,
Socrates, Plato, Pindar, Sophocles. The Bible recognizes Job,
Balaam, Melchisedek, as instances of priesthood, or divine
communication, outside the bounds of the chosen people. Heathen
religions either were not religions, or God had a part in them.
Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, were at least reformers, raised up
in God’s providence. _Gal 4:3_ classes Judaism with the
“_rudiments of the world_,” and _Rom. 5:20_ tells us that “_the
law came in beside_,” as a force coöperating with other human
factors, primitive revelation, sin, _etc._

The positive preparation in heathenism receives greater attention
when we conceive of Christ as the immanent God, revealing himself
in conscience and in history. This was the real meaning of Justin
Martyr, Apol. 1:46; 2:10, 13—“The whole race of men partook of the
Logos, and those who lived according to reason (λόγου), were
Christians, even though they were accounted atheists. Such among
the Greeks were Socrates and Heracleitus, and those who resembled
them.... Christ was known in part even to Socrates.... The
teachings of Plato are not alien to those of Christ, though not in
all respects similar. For all the writers of antiquity were able
to have a dim vision of realities by means of the indwelling seed
of the implanted Word (λόγου).” Justin Martyr claimed inspiration
for Socrates. Tertullian spoke of Socrates as “pæne
noster”—“almost one of us.” Paul speaks of the Cretans as having:
“_a prophet of their own_” (_Tit. 1:12_)—probably Epimenides (596
B. C.) whom Plato calls a θεῖος ἀνήρ—“a man of God,” and whom
Cicero couples with Bacis and the Erythræan Sibyl. Clement of
Alexandria, Stromata, 1:19; 6:5—“The same God who furnished both
the covenants was the giver of the Greek philosophy to the Greeks,
by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.” Augustine:
“Plato made me know the true God; Jesus Christ showed me the way
to him.”

Bruce, Apologetics, 207—“God gave to the Gentiles at least the
starlight of religious knowledge. The Jews were elected for the
sake of the Gentiles. There was some light even for pagans, though
heathenism on the whole was a failure. But its very failure was a
preparation for receiving the true religion.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 133, 238—“Neo-Platonism, that splendid vision of
incomparable and irrecoverable cloudland in which the sun of Greek
philosophy set.... On its ethical side Christianity had large
elements in common with reformed Stoicism; on its theological side
it moved in harmony with the new movements of Platonism.” E. G.
Robinson: “The idea that all religions but the Christian are the
direct work of the devil is a Jewish idea, and is now abandoned.
On the contrary, God has revealed himself to the race just so far
as they have been capable of knowing him.... Any religion is
better than none, for all religion implies restraint.”

_John 1:9_—“_There was the true light, even the light which
lighteth every man, coming into the world_”—has its Old Testament
equivalent in _Ps. 94:10_—“_He that chastiseth the nations, shall
not he correct, Even he that teacheth man knowledge?_” Christ is
the great educator of the race. The preincarnate Word exerted an
influence upon the consciences of the heathen. He alone makes it
true that “anima naturaliter Christiana est.” Sabatier, Philos.
Religion, 138-140—“Religion is union between God and the soul.
That experience was first perfectly realized in Christ. Here are
the ideal fact and the historical fact united and blended.
Origen’s and Tertullian’s rationalism and orthodoxy each has its
truth. The religious consciousness of Christ is the fountain head
from which Christianity has flowed. He was a beginning of life to
men. He had the spirit of sonship—God in man, and man in God.
‘Quid interius Deo?’ He showed us insistence on the moral ideal,
yet the preaching of mercy to the sinner. The gospel was the
acorn, and Christianity is the oak that has sprung from it. In the
acorn, as in the tree, are some Hebraic elements that are
temporary. Paganism is the materializing of religion; Judaism is
the legalizing of religion. ‘In me,’ says Charles Secretan, ‘lives
some one greater than I.’ ”

But the positive element in heathenism was slight. Her altars and
sacrifices, her philosophy and art, roused cravings which she was
powerless to satisfy. Her religious systems became sources of
deeper corruption. There was no hope, and no progress. “The
Sphynx’s moveless calm symbolizes the monotony of Egyptian
civilization.” Classical nations became more despairing, as they
became more cultivated. To the best minds, truth seemed impossible
of attainment, and all hope of general well-being seemed a dream.
The Jews were the only forward-looking people; and all our modern
confidence in destiny and development comes from them. They, in
their turn, drew their hopefulness solely from prophecy. Not their
“genius for religion,” but special revelation from God, made them
what they were.

Although God was in heathen history, yet so exceptional were the
advantages of the Jews, that we can almost assent to the doctrine
of the New Englander, Sept. 1883:576—“The Bible does not recognize
other revelations. It speaks of the ‘_face of the covering that
covereth all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all
nations_’ (_Is. 25:7_); _Acts 14:16, 17_—‘_who in the generations
gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways. And
yet he left not himself without witness_’ = not an internal
revelation in the hearts of sages, but an external revelation in
nature, ‘_in that he did good and gave you from heaven rains and
fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness._’
The convictions of heathen reformers with regard to divine
inspiration were dim and intangible, compared with the
consciousness of prophets and apostles that God was speaking
through them to his people.”

On heathenism as a preparation for Christ, see Tholuck, Nature and
Moral Influence of Heathenism, in Bib. Repos., 1832:80, 246, 441;
Döllinger, Gentile and Jew; Pressensé, Religions before Christ;
Max Müller, Science of Religion, 1-128; Cocker, Christianity and
Greek Philosophy; Ackerman, Christian Element in Plato; Farrar,
Seekers after God; Renan, on Rome and Christianity, in Hibbert
Lectures for 1880.

II. Positive Preparation,—in the history of Israel.

A single people was separated from all others, from the time of Abraham,
and was educated in three great truths: (1) the majesty of God, in his
unity, omnipotence, and holiness; (2) the sinfulness of man, and his moral
helplessness; (3) the certainty of a coming salvation. This education from
the time of Moses was conducted by the use of three principal agencies:

A. Law.—The Mosaic legislation, (_a_) by its theophanies and miracles,
cultivated faith in a personal and almighty God and Judge; (_b_) by its
commands and threatenings, wakened the sense of sin; (_c_) by its priestly
and sacrificial system, inspired hope of some way of pardon and access to
God.

The education of the Jews was first of all an education by Law. In
the history of the world, as in the history of the individual, law
must precede gospel, John the Baptist must go before Christ,
knowledge of sin must prepare a welcome entrance for knowledge of
a Savior. While the heathen were studying God’s works, the chosen
people were studying God. Men teach by words as well as by
works,—so does God. And words reveal heart to heart, as works
never can. “The Jews were made to know, on behalf of all mankind,
the guilt and shame of sin. Yet just when the disease was at its
height, the physicians were beneath contempt.” Wrightnour: “As if
to teach all subsequent ages that no outward cleansing would
furnish a remedy, the great deluge, which washed away the whole
sinful antediluvian world with the exception of one comparatively
pure family, had not cleansed the world from sin.”

With this gradual growth in the sense of sin there was also a
widening and deepening faith. Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit,
67—“Abel, Abraham, Moses = the individual, the family, the nation.
By faith Abel obtained witness; by faith Abraham received the son
of the promise; and by faith Moses led Israel through the Red
Sea.” Kurtz, Religionslehre, speaks of the relation between law
and gospel as “Ein fliessender Gegensatz”—“a flowing
antithesis”—like that between flower and fruit. A. B. Davidson,
Expositor, 6:163—“The course of revelation is like a river, which
cannot be cut up into sections.” E. G. Robinson: “The two
fundamental ideas of Judaism were: 1. theological—the unity of
God; 2. philosophical—the distinctness of God from the material
world. Judaism went to seed. Jesus, with the sledge-hammer of
truth, broke up the dead forms, and the Jews thought he was
destroying the Law.” On methods pursued with humanity by God, see
Simon, Reconciliation, 232-251.

B. Prophecy.—This was of two kinds: (_a_) verbal,—beginning with the
protevangelium in the garden, and extending to within four hundred years
of the coming of Christ; (_b_) typical,—in persons, as Adam, Melchisedek,
Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Jonah; and in acts, as Isaac’s
sacrifice, and Moses’ lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.

The relation of law to gospel was like that of a sketch to the
finished picture, or of David’s plan for the temple to Solomon’s
execution of it. When all other nations were sunk in pessimism and
despair, the light of hope burned brightly among the Hebrews. The
nation was forward-bound. Faith was its very life. The O. T.
saints saw all the troubles of the present “sub specie
eternitatis,” and believed that “_Light is sown for the righteous,
And gladness for the upright in heart_” (_Ps. 97:11_). The hope of
Job was the hope of the chosen people: “_I know that my Redeemer
liveth, And at last he will stand up upon the earth_” (_Job
19:25_). Hutton, Essays, 2:237—“Hebrew supernaturalism has
transmuted forever the pure naturalism of Greek poetry. And now no
modern poet can ever become really great who does not feel and
reproduce in his writings the difference between the natural and
the supernatural.”

Christ was the reality, to which the types and ceremonies of
Judaism pointed; and these latter disappeared when Christ had
come, just as the petals of the blossom drop away when the fruit
appears. Many promises to the O. T. saints which seemed to them
promises of temporal blessing, were fulfilled in a better, because
a more spiritual, way than they expected. Thus God cultivated in
them a boundless trust—a trust which was essentially the same
thing with the faith of the new dispensation, because it was the
absolute reliance of a consciously helpless sinner upon God’s
method of salvation, and so was implicitly, though not explicitly,
a faith in Christ.

The protevangelium (_Gen. 3:15_) said “_it_ [this promised seed]
_shall bruise thy head_.” The “_it_” was rendered in some Latin
manuscripts “_ipsa_.” Hence Roman Catholic divines attributed the
victory to the Virgin. Notice that Satan was cursed, but not Adam
and Eve; for they were candidates for restoration. The promise of
the Messiah narrowed itself down as the race grew older, from
Abraham to Judah, David, Bethlehem, and the Virgin. Prophecy spoke
of “_the sceptre_” and of “_the seventy weeks_.” Haggai and
Malachi foretold that the Lord should suddenly come to the second
temple. Christ was to be true man and true God; prophet, priest,
and king; humbled and exalted. When prophecy had become complete,
a brief interval elapsed, and then he, of whom Moses in the law,
and the prophets, did write, actually came.

All these preparations for Christ’s coming, however, through the
perversity of man became most formidable obstacles to the progress
of the gospel. The Roman Empire put Christ to death. Philosophy
rejected Christ as foolishness. Jewish ritualism, the mere shadow,
usurped the place of worship and faith, the substance of religion.
God’s last method of preparation in the case of Israel was that of

C. Judgment—Repeated divine chastisements for idolatry culminated in the
overthrow of the kingdom, and the captivity of the Jews. The exile had two
principal effects: (_a_) religious,—in giving monotheism firm root in the
heart of the people, and in leading to the establishment of the
synagogue-system, by which monotheism was thereafter preserved and
propagated; (_b_) civil,—in converting the Jews from an agricultural to a
trading people, scattering them among all nations, and finally imbuing
them with the spirit of Roman law and organization.

Thus a people was made ready to receive the gospel and to propagate it
throughout the world, at the very time when the world had become conscious
of its needs, and, through its greatest philosophers and poets, was
expressing its longings for deliverance.

At the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa, there lay a little
land through which passed all the caravan-routes from the East to
the West. Palestine was “the eye of the world.” The Hebrews
throughout the Roman world were “the greater Palestine of the
Dispersion.” The scattering of the Jews through all lands had
prepared a monotheistic starting point for the gospel in every
heathen city. Jewish synagogues had prepared places of assembly
for the hearing of the gospel. The Greek language—the universal
literary language of the world—had prepared a medium in which that
gospel could be spoken. “Cæsar had unified the Latin West, as
Alexander the Greek East”; and universal peace, together with
Roman roads and Roman law, made it possible for that gospel, when
once it had got a foothold, to spread itself to the ends of the
earth. The first dawn of missionary enterprise appears among the
proselyting Jews before Christ’s time. Christianity laid hold of
this proselyting spirit, and sanctified it, to conquer the world
to the faith of Christ.

Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:9, 10—“In his great expedition across
the Hellespont, Paul reversed the course which Alexander took, and
carried the gospel into Europe to the centres of the old Greek
culture.” In all these preparations we see many lines converging
to one result, in a manner inexplicable, unless we take them as
proofs of the wisdom and power of God preparing the way for the
kingdom of his Son; and all this in spite of the fact that “_a
hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in_” (_Rom. 11:25_). James Robertson, Early
Religion of Israel, 15—“Israel now instructs the world in the
Worship of Mammon, after having once taught it the knowledge of
God.”

On Judaism, as a preparation for Christ, see Döllinger, Gentile
and Jew, 2:291-419; Martensen, Dogmatics, 224-236; Hengstenberg,
Christology of the O. T.; Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for
Christ; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 458-485; Fairbairn, Typology;
MacWhorter, Jahveh Christ; Kurtz, Christliche Religionslehre, 114;
Edwards’ History of Redemption, in Works, 1:297-395; Walker,
Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation; Conybeare and Howson, Life
and Epistles of St. Paul, 1:1-37; Luthardt, Fundamental Truths,
257-281; Schaff, Hist. Christian Ch., 1:32-49; Butler’s Analogy,
Bohn’s ed., 228-238; Bushnell, Vicarious Sac., 63-66; Max Müller,
Science of Language, 2:443; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
1:463-485; Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 47-73.

Section II.—The Person Of Christ.

The redemption of mankind from sin was to be effected through a Mediator
who should unite in himself both the human nature and the divine, in order
that he might reconcile God to man and man to God. To facilitate an
understanding of the Scriptural doctrine under consideration, it will be
desirable at the outset to present a brief historical survey of views
respecting the Person of Christ.

In the history of doctrine, as we have seen, beliefs held in
solution at the beginning are only gradually precipitated and
crystallized into definite formulas. The first question which
Christians naturally asked themselves was “_What think ye of the
Christ_” (_Mat 22:42_); then his relation to the Father; then, in
due succession, the nature of sin, of atonement, of justification,
of regeneration. Connecting these questions with the names of the
great leaders who sought respectively to answer them, we have: 1.
the Person of Christ, treated by Gregory Nazianzen (328); 2. the
Trinity, by Athanasius (325-373); 3. Sin, by Augustine (353-430);
4. Atonement, by Anselm (1033-1109); 5. Justification by faith, by
Luther (1485-1560); 6. Regeneration, by John Wesley
(1703-1791);—six weekdays of theology, leaving only a seventh, for
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which may be the work of our age.
_John 10:36_—“_him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the
world_”—hints at some mysterious process by which the Son was
prepared for his mission. Athanasius: “If the Word of God is in
the _world_, as in a body, what is there strange in affirming that
he has also entered into _humanity_?” This is the natural end of
evolution from lower to higher. See Medd, Bampton Lectures for
1882, on The One Mediator: The Operation of the Son of God in
Nature and in Grace; Orr, God’s Image in Man.

I. Historical Survey of Views Respecting the Person of Christ.

1. _The Ebionites_ (אביון = “poor”; A. D. 107?) denied the reality of
Christ’s divine nature, and held him to be merely man, whether naturally
or supernaturally conceived. This man, however, held a peculiar relation
to God, in that, from the time of his baptism, an unmeasured fulness of
the divine Spirit rested upon him. Ebionism was simply Judaism within the
pale of the Christian church, and its denial of Christ’s godhood was
occasioned by the apparent incompatibility of this doctrine with
monotheism.

Fürst (Heb. Lexicon) derives the name “Ebionite” from the word
signifying “poor”; see _Is. 25:4_—“_thou hast been a stronghold to
the poor_”; _Mat 5:3_—“_Blessed are the poor in spirit._” It means
“oppressed, pious souls.” Epiphanius traces them back to the
Christians who took refuge, A. D. 66, at Pella, just before the
destruction of Jerusalem. They lasted down to the fourth century.
Dorner can assign no age for the formation of the sect, nor any
historically ascertained person as its head. It was not Judaic
Christianity, but only a fraction of this. There were two
divisions of the Ebionites:

(_a_) The Nazarenes, who held to the supernatural birth of Christ,
while they would not go to the length of admitting the preëxisting
hypostasis of the Son. They are said to have had the gospel of
Matthew, in Hebrew.

(_b_) The Cerinthian Ebionites, who put the baptism of Christ in
place of his supernatural birth, and made the ethical sonship the
cause of the physical. It seemed to them a heathenish fable that
the Son of God should be born of the Virgin. There was no personal
union between the divine and human in Christ. Christ, as distinct
from Jesus, was not a merely impersonal power descending upon
Jesus, but a preëxisting hypostasis above the world-creating
powers. The Cerinthian Ebionites, who on the whole best represent
the spirit of Ebionism, approximated to Pharisaic Judaism, and
were hostile to the writings of Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews,
in fact, is intended to counteract an Ebionitic tendency to
overstrain law and to underrate Christ. In a complete view,
however, should also be mentioned:

(_c_) The Gnostic Ebionism of the pseudo-Clementines, which in
order to destroy the deity of Christ and save the pure monotheism,
so-called, of primitive religion, gave up even the best part of
the Old Testament. In all its forms, Ebionism conceives of God and
man as external to each other. God could not become man. Christ
was no more than a prophet or teacher, who, as the reward of his
virtue, was from the time of his baptism specially endowed with
the Spirit. After his death he was exalted to kingship. But that
would not justify the worship which the church paid him. A merely
creaturely mediator would separate us from God, instead of uniting
us to him. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:305-307 (Syst. Doct.,
3:201-204), and Hist. Doct. Person Christ, A.1:187-217; Reuss,
Hist. Christ. Theol., 1:100-107; Schaff, Ch. Hist., 1:213-215.

2. _The Docetæ_ (δοκέω—“to seem,” “to appear”; A. D. 70-170), like most of
the Gnostics in the second century and the Manichees in the third, denied
the reality of Christ’s human body. This view was the logical sequence of
their assumption of the inherent evil of matter. If matter is evil and
Christ was pure, then Christ’s human body must have been merely
phantasmal. Docetism was simply pagan philosophy introduced into the
church.

The Gnostic Basilides held to a real human Christ, with whom the
divine νοῦς became united at the baptism; but the followers of
Basilides became Docetæ. To them, the body of Christ was merely a
seeming one. There was no real life or death. Valentinus made the
Æon, Christ, with a body purely pneumatic and worthy of himself,
pass through the body of the Virgin, as water through a reed,
taking up into himself nothing of the human nature through which
he passed; or as a ray of light through colored glass which only
imparts to the light a portion of its own darkness. Christ’s life
was simply a theophany. The Patripassians and Sabellians, who are
only sects of the Docetæ, denied all real humanity to Christ.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 141—“He treads the thorns of death and
shame ‘like a triumphal path,’ of which he never felt the
sharpness. There was development only externally and in
appearance. No ignorance can be ascribed to him amidst the
omniscience of the Godhead.” Shelley: “A mortal shape to him Was
as the vapor dim Which the orient planet animates with light.” The
strong argument against Docetism was found in _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself
in like manner partook of the same._”

That Docetism appeared so early, shows that the impression Christ
made was that of a superhuman being. Among many of the Gnostics,
the philosophy which lay at the basis of their Docetism was a
pantheistic apotheosis of the world. God did not need to become
man, for man was essentially divine. This view, and the opposite
error of Judaism, already mentioned, both showed their
insufficiency by attempts to combine with each other, as in the
Alexandrian philosophy. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ,
A.1:218-253, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307-310 (Syst. Doct.,
3:204-206); Neander, Ch. Hist, 1:387.

3. _The Arians_ (Arius, condemned at Nice, 325) denied the integrity of
the divine nature in Christ. They regarded the Logos who united himself to
humanity in Jesus Christ, not as possessed of absolute godhood, but as the
first and highest of created beings. This view originated in a
misinterpretation of the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s state of
humiliation, and in mistaking temporary subordination for original and
permanent inequality.

Arianism is called by Dorner a reaction from Sabellianism.
Sabellius had reduced the incarnation of Christ to a temporary
phenomenon. Arius thought to lay stress on the hypostasis of the
Son, and to give it fixity and substance. But, to his mind, the
reality of Sonship seemed to require subordination to the Father.
Origen had taught the subordination of the Son to the Father, in
connection with his doctrine of eternal generation. Arius held to
the subordination, and also to the generation, but this last, he
declared, could not be eternal, but must be in time. See Dorner,
Person Christ, A.2:227-244, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307, 312, 313
(Syst. Doct., 3:203, 207-210); Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Arianismus. See also this Compendium, Vol. I:328-330.

4. _The Apollinarians_ (Apollinaris, condemned at Constantinople, 381)
denied the integrity of Christ’s human nature. According to this view,
Christ had no human νοῦς or πνεῦμα, other than that which was furnished by
the divine nature. Christ had only the human σῶμα and ψυχή; the place of
the human νοῦς or πνεῦμα was filled by the divine Logos. Apollinarism is
an attempt to construe the doctrine of Christ’s person in the forms of the
Platonic trichotomy.

Lest divinity should seem a foreign element, when added to this
curtailed manhood, Apollinaris said that there was an eternal
tendency to the human in the Logos himself; that in God was the
true manhood; that the Logos is the eternal, archetypal man. But
here is no _becoming_ man—only a manifestation in flesh of what
the Logos already _was_. So we have a Christ of great head and
dwarfed body. Justin Martyr preceded Apollinaris in this view. In
opposing it, the church Fathers said that “what the Son of God has
not taken to himself, he has not sanctified”—τὸ ἀπρόσληπτον καὶ
ἀθεράπευτον. See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The
impossibility, on the Arian theory, of making two finite souls
into one, finally led to the [Apollinarian] denial of any human
soul in Christ”; see also, Dorner, Person Christ, A.2:352-399, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:310 (Syst. Doct., 3:206, 207); Shedd, Hist.
Doctrine, 1:394.

Apollinaris taught that the eternal Word took into union with
himself, not a complete human nature, but an irrational human
animal. Simon, Reconciliation, 329, comes near to being an
Apollinarian, when he maintains that the incarnate Logos was
human, but was not a man. He is the constituter of man,
self-limited, in order that he may save that to which he has given
life. Gore, Incarnation, 93—“Apollinaris suggested that the
archetype of manhood exists in God, who made man in his own image,
so that man’s nature in some sense preëxisted in God. The Son of
God was eternally human, and he could fill the place of the human
mind in Christ without his ceasing to be in some sense divine....
This the church negatived,—man is not God, nor God man. The first
principle of theism is that manhood at the bottom is not the same
thing as Godhead. This is a principle intimately bound up with
man’s responsibility and the reality of sin. The interests of
theism were at stake.”

5. _The Nestorians_ (Nestorius, removed from the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, 431) denied the real union between the divine and the
human natures in Christ, making it rather a moral than an organic one.
They refused therefore to attribute to the resultant unity the attributes
of each nature, and regarded Christ as a man in very near relation to God.
Thus they virtually held to two natures and two persons, instead of two
natures in one person.

Nestorius disliked the phrase: “Mary, mother of God.” The
Chalcedon statement asserted its truth, with the significant
addition: “as to his humanity.” Nestorius made Christ a peculiar
temple of God. He believed in συνάφεια, not ἕνωσις,—junction and
indwelling, but not absolute union. He made too much of the
analogy of the union of the believer with Christ, and separated as
much as possible the divine and the human. The two natures were,
in his view, ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος, instead of being ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο,
which together constitute εἶς—one personality. The union which he
accepted was a moral union, which makes Christ simply God and man,
instead of the God-man.

John of Damascus compared the passion of Christ to the felling of
a tree on which the sun shines. The axe fells the tree, but does
no harm to the sunbeams. So the blows which struck Christ’s
humanity caused no harm to his deity; while the flesh suffered,
the deity remained impassible. This leaves, however, no divine
efficacy of the human sufferings, and no personal union of the
human with the divine. The error of Nestorius arose from a
philosophic nominalism, which refused to conceive of nature
without personality. He believed in nothing more than a local or
moral union, like the marriage union, in which two become one; or
like the state, which is sometimes called a moral person, because
having a unity composed of many persons. See Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:53-79, and Glaubenslehre, 2:315, 316 (Syst. Doct.,
3:211-213); Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:210; Wilberforce,
Incarnation, 152-154.

“There was no need here of the virgin-birth,—to secure a sinless
father as well as mother would have been enough. Nestorianism
holds to no real incarnation—only to an alliance between God and
man. After the fashion of the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, man
and God are joined together. But the incarnation is not merely a
higher degree of the mystical union.” Gore, Incarnation,
94—“Nestorius adopted and popularized the doctrine of the famous
commentator, Theodore of Mopsuestia. But the Christ of Nestorius
was simply a deified man, not God incarnate,—he was from below,
not from above. If he was exalted to union with the divine
essence, his exaltation was only that of one individual man.”

6. _The Eutychians_ (condemned at Chalcedon, 451) denied the distinction
and coëxistence of the two natures, and held to a mingling of both into
one, which constituted a _tertium quid_, or third nature. Since in this
case the divine must overpower the human, it follows that the human was
really absorbed into or transmuted into the divine, although the divine
was not in all respects the same, after the union, that it was before.
Hence the Eutychians were often called Monophysites, because they
virtually reduced the two natures to one.

They were an Alexandrian school, which included monks of
Constantinople and Egypt. They used the words σύγχυσις,
μεταβολή—confounding, transformation—to describe the union of the
two natures in Christ. Humanity joined to deity was as a drop of
honey mingled with the ocean. There was a change in either
element, but as when a stone attracts the earth, or a meteorite
the sun, or when a small boat pulls a ship, all the movement was
virtually on the part of the smaller object. Humanity was so
absorbed in deity, as to be altogether lost. The union was
illustrated by electron, a metal compounded of silver and gold. A
more modern illustration would be that of the chemical union of an
acid and an alkali, to form a salt unlike either of the
constituents.

In effect this theory denied the human element, and, with this,
the possibility of atonement, on the part of human nature, as well
as of real union of man with God. Such a magical union of the two
natures as Eutyches described is inconsistent with any real
_becoming man_ on the part of the Logos,—the manhood is well-nigh
as illusory as upon the theory of the Docetæ. Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 140—“This turns not the Godhead only but the manhood also
into something foreign—into some nameless nature, betwixt and
between—the fabulous nature of a semi-human demigod,” like the
Centaur.

The author of “The German Theology” says that “Christ’s human
nature was utterly bereft of self, and was nothing else but a
house and habitation of God.” The Mystics would have human
personality so completely the organ of the divine that “we may be
to God what man’s hand is to a man,” and that “I” and “mine” may
cease to have any meaning. Both these views savor of Eutychianism.
On the other hand, the Unitarian says that Christ was “a mere
man.” But there cannot be such a thing as a mere man, exclusive of
aught above and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. The
Trinitarian sometimes declares himself as believing that Christ is
God and man, thus implying the existence of two substances. Better
say that Christ is the God-man, who manifests all the divine
powers and qualities of which all men and all nature are partial
embodiments. See Dorner, Person of Christ, B.1:83-93, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:318, 319 (Syst. Doct., 3:214-216); Guericke, Ch.
History, 1:356-360.

The foregoing survey would seem to show that history had exhausted the
possibilities of heresy, and that the future denials of the doctrine of
Christ’s person must be, in essence, forms of the views already mentioned.
All controversies with regard to the person of Christ must, of necessity,
hinge upon one of three points: first, the reality of the two natures;
secondly, the integrity of the two natures; thirdly, the union of the two
natures in one person. Of these points, Ebionism and Docetism deny the
reality of the natures; Arianism and Apollinarianism deny their integrity;
while Nestorianism and Eutychianism deny their proper union. In opposition
to all these errors, the orthodox doctrine held its ground and maintains
it to this day.

We may apply to this subject what Dr. A. P. Peabody said in a
different connection: “The canon of infidelity was closed almost
as soon as that of the Scriptures”—modern unbelievers having, for
the most part, repeated the objections of their ancient
predecessors. Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 126—“As a shell
which has failed to burst is picked up on some old battle-field,
by some one on whom experience is thrown away, and is exploded by
him in the bosom of his approving family, with disastrous results,
so one of these abandoned beliefs may be dug up by the head of
some intellectual family, to the confusion of those who follow him
as their leader.”

7. _The Orthodox doctrine_ (promulgated at Chalcedon, 451) holds that in
the one person Jesus Christ there are two natures, a human nature and a
divine nature, each in its completeness and integrity, and that these two
natures are organically and indissolubly united, yet so that no third
nature is formed thereby. In brief, to use the antiquated dictum, orthodox
doctrine forbids us either to divide the person or to confound the
natures.

That this doctrine is Scriptural and rational, we have yet to show. We may
most easily arrange our proofs by reducing the three points mentioned to
two, namely: first, the reality and integrity of the two natures;
secondly, the union of the two natures in one person.

The formula of Chalcedon is negative, with the exception of its
assertion of a ἕνωσις ὑποστατική. It proceeds from the natures,
and regards the result of the union to be the person. Each of the
two natures is regarded as in movement toward the other. The
symbol says nothing of an ἀνυποστασία of the human nature, nor
does it say that the Logos furnishes the ego in the personality.
John of Damascus, however, pushed forward to these conclusions,
and his work, translated into Latin, was used by Peter Lombard,
and determined the views of the Western church of the Middle Ages.
Dorner regards this as having given rise to the Mariolatry,
saint-invocation, and transubstantiation of the Roman Catholic
Church. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:189 _sq._; Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:93-119, and Glaubenslehre, 2:320-328 (Syst. Doct.,
3:216-223), in which last passage may be found valuable matter
with regard to the changing uses of the words πρόσωπον, ὑπόστασις,
οὐσία, _etc._

Gore, Incarnation, 96, 101—“These decisions simply express in a
new form, without substantial addition, the apostolic teaching as
it is represented in the New Testament. They express it in a new
form for protective purposes, as a legal enactment protects a
moral principle. They are developments only in the sense that they
represent the apostolic teaching worked out into formulas by the
aid of a terminology which was supplied by Greek dialectics....
What the church borrowed from Greek thought was her terminology,
not the substance of her creed. Even in regard to her terminology
we must make one important reservation; for Christianity laid all
stress on the personality of God and man, of which Hellenism had
thought but little.”

II. The two Natures of Christ,—their Reality and Integrity.

1. The Humanity of Christ.

A. Its Reality.—This may be shown as follows:

(_a_) He expressly called himself, and was called, “man.”

_John 8:40_—“_ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the
truth_”; _Acts 2:22_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God
unto you_”; _Rom. 5:15_—“_the one man, Jesus Christ_”; _1 Cor.
15:21_—“_by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and man,
himself man, Christ Jesus._” Compare the genealogies in _Mat.
1:1-17_ and _Luke 3:23-38_, the former of which proves Jesus to be
in the royal line, and the latter of which proves him to be in the
natural line, of succession from David; the former tracing back
his lineage to Abraham, and the latter to Adam. Christ is
therefore the son of David, and of the stock of Israel. Compare
also the phrase “_Son of man_,” _e. g._, in _Mat. 20:28_, which,
however much it may mean in addition, certainly indicates the
veritable humanity of Jesus. Compare, finally, the term “_flesh_”
(= human nature), applied to him in _John 1:14_—“_And the Word
became flesh_” and in _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God._”

“Jesus is the true Son of man whom he proclaimed himself to be.
This implies that he is the representative of all humanity.
Consider for a moment what is implied in your being a man. How
many parents had you? You answer, Two. How many grandparents? You
answer, Four. How many great-grandparents? Eight. How many
great-great-grandparents? Sixteen. So the number of your ancestors
increases as you go further back, and if you take in only twenty
generations, you will have to reckon yourself as the outcome of
more than a million progenitors. The name Smith, or Jones, which
you bear, represents only one strain of all those million; you
might almost as well bear any other name; your existence is more
an expression of the race at large than of any particular family
or line. What is true of you, was true, on the human side, of the
Lord Jesus. In him all the lines of our common humanity converged.
He was the Son of man, far more than he was Son of Mary”; see A.
H. Strong, Sermon before the London Baptist Congress.

(_b_) He possessed the essential elements of human nature as at present
constituted—a material body and a rational soul.

_Mat. 26:38_—“_My soul is exceeding sorrowful_”; _John 11:33_—“_he
groaned in the spirit_”; _Mat. 26:26_—“_this is my body_”;
_28_—“_this is my blood_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_a spirit hath not flesh
and bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since then the
children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like
manner partook of the same_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which we have
heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we
beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life_”;
_4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is of God._”

Yet Christ was not all men in one, and he did not illustrate the
development of all human powers. Laughter, painting, literature,
marriage—these provinces he did not invade. Yet we do not regard
these as absent from the ideal man. The perfection of Jesus was
the perfection of self-limiting love. For our sakes he sanctified
himself (_John 17:19_), or separated himself from much that in an
ordinary man would have been excellence and delight. He became an
example to us, by doing God’s will and reflecting God’s character
in his particular environment and in his particular mission—that
of the world’s Redeemer; see H. E. Robins, Ethics of the Christian
Life, 259-303.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 86-105—“Christ was not a man
only amongst men. His relation to the human race is not that he
was another specimen, differing, by being another, from every one
but himself. His relation to the race was not a differentiating
but a consummating relation. He was not generically but
inclusively man.... The only relation that can at all directly
compare with it is that of Adam, who in a real sense was
humanity.... That complete indwelling and possessing of even one
other, which the yearnings of man toward man imperfectly approach,
is only possible, in any fulness of the words, to that spirit of
man which is the Spirit of God: to the Spirit of God become,
through incarnation, the spirit of man.... If Christ’s humanity
were not the humanity of Deity, it could not stand in the wide,
inclusive, consummating relation, in which it stands, in fact, to
the humanity of all other men.... Yet the centre of Christ’s being
as man was not in himself but in God. He was the expression, by
willing reflection, of Another.”

(_c_) He was moved by the instinctive principles, and he exercised the
active powers, which belong to a normal and developed humanity (hunger,
thirst, weariness, sleep, love, compassion, anger, anxiety, fear,
groaning, weeping, prayer).

_Mat 4:2_—“_he afterward hungered_”; _John 19:28_—“_I thirst_”;
_4:6_—“_Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus
by the well_”; _Mat 8:24_—“_the boat was covered with the waves:
but he was asleep_”; _Mark 10:21_—“_Jesus looking upon him loved
him_”; _Mat. 9:36_—“_when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion for them_”; _Mark 3:5_—“_looked round about on them
with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart_”; _Heb.
5:7_—“_supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that
was able to save him from death_”; _John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul
troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour_”;
_11:33_—“_he groaned in the spirit_”; _35_—“_Jesus wept_”; _Mat
14:23_—“_he went up into the mountain apart to pray._” _Heb.
2:16_—“_For it is not doubtless angels whom he rescueth, but he
rescueth the seed of Abraham_” (Kendrick).

Prof. J. P. Silvernail, on The Elocution of Jesus, finds the
following intimations as to his delivery. It was characterized by
1. Naturalness (sitting, as at Capernaum); 2. Deliberation
(cultivates responsiveness in his hearers); 3. Circumspection (he
looked at Peter); 4. Dramatic action (woman taken in adultery); 5.
Self-control (authority, poise, no vociferation, denunciation of
Scribes and Pharisees). All these are manifestations of truly
human qualities and virtues. The epistle of James, the brother of
our Lord, with its exaltation of a meek, quiet and holy life, may
be an unconscious reflection of the character of Jesus, as it had
appeared to James during the early days at Nazareth. So John the
Baptist’s exclamation, “_I have need to be baptized of thee_”
(_Mat 3:14_), may be an inference from his intercourse with Jesus
in childhood and youth.

(_d_) He was subject to the ordinary laws of human development, both in
body and soul (grew and waxed strong in spirit; asked questions; grew in
wisdom and stature; learned obedience; suffered being tempted; was made
perfect through sufferings).

_Luke 2:40_—“_the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with
wisdom_”; _46_—“_sitting in the midst of the teachers, both
hearing them, and asking them questions_” (here, at his twelfth
year, he appears first to become fully conscious that he is the
Sent of God, the Son of God); _49_—“_know ye not that I must be in
my Father’s house?_” (lit. “in the things of my Father”);
_52_—“_advanced in wisdom and stature_”; _Heb. 5:8_—“_learned
obedience by the things which he suffered_”; _2:18_—“_in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them
that are tempted_”; _10_—“_it became him ... to make the author of
their salvation perfect through sufferings._”

Keble: “Was not our Lord a little child, Taught by degrees to
pray; By father dear and mother mild Instructed day by day?”
Adamson, The Mind in Christ: “To Henry Drummond Christianity was
the crown of the evolution of the whole universe. Jesus’ growth in
stature and in favor with God and men is a picture in miniature of
the age-long evolutionary process.” Forrest, Christ of History and
of Experience, 185—“The incarnation of the Son was not his one
revelation of God, but the interpretation to sinful humanity of
all his other revelations of God in nature and history and moral
experience, which had been darkened by sin.... The Logos,
incarnate or not, is the τέλος as well as the ἀρχή of creation.”

Andrew Murray, Spirit of Christ, 26, 27—“Though now baptized
himself, he cannot yet baptize others. He must first, in the power
of his baptism, meet temptation and overcome it; must learn
obedience and suffer; yea, through the eternal Spirit, offer
himself a sacrifice to God and his Will; then only could he afresh
receive the Holy Spirit as the reward of obedience, with the power
to baptize all who belong to him”; see _Acts 2:33_—“_Being
therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of
the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth
this, which ye see and hear._”

(_e_) He suffered and died (bloody sweat; gave up his spirit; his side
pierced, and straightway there came out blood and water).

_Luke 22:44_—“_being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his
sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the
ground_”; _John 19:30_—“_he bowed his head, and gave up his
spirit_”; _34_—“_one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his
side, and straightway there came out blood and water_”—held by
Stroud, Physical Cause of our Lord’s Death, to be proof that Jesus
died of a broken heart.

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1:9-19—“The Lord is said to have grown in
wisdom and favor with God, not because it was so, but because he
acted as if it were so. So he was exalted after death, as if this
exaltation were on account of death.” But we may reply: Resolve
all signs of humanity into mere appearance, and you lose the
divine nature as well as the human; for God is truth and cannot
act a lie. The babe, the child, even the man, in certain respects,
was ignorant. Jesus, the boy, was not making crosses, as in
Overbeck’s picture, but rather yokes and plows, as Justin Martyr
relates—serving a real apprenticeship in Joseph’s workshop: _Mark
6:3_—“_Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?_”

See Holman Hunt’s picture, “The Shadow of the Cross”—in which not
Jesus, but only Mary, sees the shadow of the cross upon the wall.
He lived a life of faith, as well as of prayer (_Heb.
12:2_—“_Jesus the author_ [captain, prince] _and perfecter of our
faith_”), dependent upon Scripture, which was much of it, as _Ps.
16_ and _118_, and _Is. 49, 50, 61,_ written for him, as well as
about him. See Park, Discourses, 297-327; Deutsch, Remains,
131—“The boldest transcendental flight of the Talmud is its
saying: ‘God prays.’ ” In Christ’s humanity, united as it is to
deity, we have the fact answering to this piece of Talmudic
poetry.

B. Its Integrity. We here use the term “integrity” to signify, not merely
completeness, but perfection. That which is perfect is, _a fortiori_,
complete in all its parts. Christ’s human nature was:

(_a_) Supernaturally conceived; since the denial of his supernatural
conception involves either a denial of the purity of Mary, his mother, or
a denial of the truthfulness of Matthew’s and Luke’s narratives.

_Luke 1:34, 35_—“_And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her,
The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most
High shall overshadow thee._” The “_seed of the woman_” (_Gen.
3:15_) was one who had no earthly father. “_Eve_” = life, not only
as being the source of physical life to the race, but also as
bringing into the world him who was to be its spiritual life.
Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—Jesus Christ “had no earthly
father; his birth was a creative act of God, breaking through the
chain of human generation.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:447 (Syst.
Doct., 3:345)—“The new science recognizes manifold methods of
propagation, and that too even in one and the same species.”

Professor Loeb has found that the unfertilized egg of the
sea-urchin may be made by chemical treatment to produce thrifty
young, and he thinks it probable that the same effect may be
produced among the mammalia. Thus parthenogenesis in the highest
order of life is placed among the scientific possibilities.
Romanes, even while he was an agnostic, affirmed that a
virgin-birth even in the human race would be by no means out of
the range of possibility; see his Darwin and After Darwin, 119,
footnote—“Even if a virgin has ever conceived and borne a son, and
even if such a fact in the human species has been unique, it would
not betoken any breach of physiological continuity.” Only a new
impulse from the Creator could save the Redeemer from the long
accruing fatalities of human generation. But the new creation of
humanity in Christ is scientifically quite as possible as its
first creation in Adam; and in both cases there may have been no
violation of natural law, but only a unique revelation of its
possibilities. “Birth from a virgin made it clear that a new thing
was taking place in the earth, and that One was coming into the
world who was not simply man.” A. B. Bruce: “Thoroughgoing
naturalism excludes the virgin life as well as the virgin birth.”
See Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 254-270; A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 176.

Paul Lobstein, Incarnation of our Lord, 217—“That which is unknown
to the teachings of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John and St.
James, and our Lord himself, and is absent from the earliest and
the latest gospels, cannot be so essential as many people have
supposed.” This argument from silence is sufficiently met by the
considerations that Mark passes over thirty years of our Lord’s
life in silence; that John presupposes the narratives of Matthew
and of Luke; that Paul does not deal with the story of Jesus’
life. The facts were known at first only to Mary and to Joseph;
their very nature involved reticence until Jesus was demonstrated
to be “_the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection from the
dead_” (_Rom. 1:4_); meantime the natural development of Jesus and
his refusal to set up an earthly kingdom may have made the
miraculous events of thirty years ago seem to Mary like a
wonderful dream; so only gradually the marvellous tale of the
mother of the Lord found its way into the gospel tradition and
creeds of the church, and into the inmost hearts of Christians of
all countries; see F. L. Anderson, in Baptist Review and
Expositor, 1904:25-44, and Machen, on the N. T. Account of the
Birth of Jesus, in Princeton Theol. Rev., Oct. 1905, and Jan.
1906.

Cooke, on The Virgin Birth of our Lord, in Methodist Rev., Nov.
1904:849-857—“If there is a moral taint in the human race, if in
the very blood and constitution of humanity there is an
ineradicable tendency to sin, then it is utterly inconceivable
that any one born in the race by natural means should escape the
taint of that race. And, finally, if the virgin birth is not
historical, then a difficulty greater than any that destructive
criticism has yet evolved from documents, interpolations,
psychological improbabilities and unconscious contradictions
confronts the reason and upsets all the long results of scientific
observation,—that a sinful and deliberately sinning and unmarried
pair should have given life to the purest human being that ever
lived or of whom the human race has ever dreamed, and that he,
knowing and forgiving the sins of others, never knew the shame of
his own origin.” See also Gore, Dissertations, 1-68, on the Virgin
Birth of our Lord, J. Armitage Robinson, Some Thoughts on the
Incarnation, 42, both of whom show that without assuming the
reality of the virgin birth we cannot account for the origin of
the narratives of Matthew and of Luke, nor for the acceptance of
the virgin birth by the early Christians. _Per contra_, see Hoben,
in Am. Jour. Theol., 1902:478-506, 709-752. For both sides of the
controversy, see Symposium by Bacon, Zenos, Rhees and Warfield, in
Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:1-30; and especially Orr, Virgin Birth
of Christ.

(_b_) Free, both from hereditary depravity, and from actual sin; as is
shown by his never offering sacrifice, never praying for forgiveness,
teaching that all but he needed the new birth, challenging all to convict
him of a single sin.

Jesus frequently went up to the temple, but he never offered
sacrifice. He prayed: “_Father, forgive them_” (_Luke 23:34_); but
he never prayed: “Father, forgive _me_.” He said: “_Ye must be
born anew_” (_John 3:7_); but the words indicated that _he_ had no
such need. “At no moment in all that life could a single detail
have been altered, except for the worse.” He not only _yielded_ to
God’s will when made known to him, but he _sought_ it: “_I seek
not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me_” (_John
5:30_). The anger which he showed was no passionate or selfish or
vindictive anger, but the indignation of righteousness against
hypocrisy and cruelty—an indignation accompanied with grief:
“_looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the
hardening of their heart_” (_Mark 3:5_). F. W. H. Myers, St. Paul,
19, 53—“Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating Willest
be asked, and thou wilt answer then, Show the hid heart beneath
creation beating, Smile with kind eyes and be a man with men....
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He
shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for
Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is
Christ.” Not personal experience of sin, but resistance to it,
fitted him to deliver us from it.

_Luke 1:35_—“_wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten
shall be called the Son of God_”; _John 8:46_—“_Which of you
convicteth me of sin?_” _14:30_—“_the prince of the world cometh:
and he hath nothing in me_” = not the slightest evil inclination
upon which his temptations can lay hold; _Rom. 8:3_—“_in the
likeness of sinful flesh_” = in flesh, but without the sin which
in other men clings to the flesh; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no
sin_”; _Heb. 4:15_—“_in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin_”; _7:26_—“_holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from
sinners_”—by the fact of his immaculate conception;
_9:14_—“_through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
blemish unto God_”; _1 Pet. 1:19_—“_precious blood, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ_”;
_2:22_—“_who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth_”;
_1 John 3:5, 7_—“_in him is no sin ... he is righteous._”

Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—“Had Christ been only human nature,
he could not have been without sin. But _life_ can draw out of the
putrescent clod materials for its own living. Divine life
appropriates the human.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst.
Doct., 3:344)—“What with us is regeneration, is with him the
incarnation of God.” In this origin of Jesus’ sinlessness from his
union with God, we see the absurdity, both doctrinally and
practically, of speaking of an immaculate conception of the
Virgin, and of making her sinlessness precede that of her Son. On
the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin, see H. B. Smith, System, 389-392; Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 129-131—“It makes the regeneration of humanity begin, not
with Christ, but with the Virgin. It breaks his connection with
the race. Instead of springing sinless from the sinful race, he
derives his humanity from something not like the rest of us.”
Thomas Aquinas and Liguori both call Mary the Queen of Mercy, as
Jesus her Son is King of Justice; see Thomas, Præf. in Sept. Cath.
Ep., Comment on Esther, 5:3, and Liguori, Glories of Mary, 1:80
(Dublin version of 1866). Bradford, Heredity, 289—“The Roman
church has almost apotheosized Mary; but it must not be forgotten
that the process began with Jesus. From what he was, an inference
was drawn concerning what his mother must have been.”

“Christ took human nature in such a way that this nature, without
sin, bore the consequences of sin.” That portion of human nature
which the Logos took into union with himself was, in the very
instant and by the fact of his taking it, purged from all its
inherent depravity. But if in Christ there was no sin, or tendency
to sin, how could he be tempted? In the same way, we reply, that
Adam was tempted. Christ was not omniscient: _Mark 13:32_—“_of
that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father._” Only at the close of
the first temptation does Jesus recognize Satan as the adversary
of souls: _Mat. 4:10_—“_Get thee hence, Satan._” Jesus could be
tempted, not only because he was not omniscient, but also because
he had the keenest susceptibility to all the forms of innocent
desire. To these desires temptation may appeal. Sin consists, not
in these desires, but in the gratification of them out of God’s
order, and contrary to God’s will. Meyer: “Lust is appetite run
wild. There is no harm in any natural appetite, considered in
itself. But appetite has been spoiled by the Fall.” So Satan
appealed (_Mat. 4:1-11_) to our Lord’s desire for food, for
applause, for power; to “Ueberglaube, Aberglaude, Unglaube”
(Kurtz); _cf._ _Mat. 26:39; 27:42; 26:53_. All temptation must be
addressed either to desire or fear; so Christ “_was in all points
tempted like as we are_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The first temptation, in
the wilderness, was addressed to desire; the second, in the
garden, was addressed to fear. Satan, after the first, “_departed
from him for a season_” (_Luke 4:13_); but he returned, in
Gethsemane—“_the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing
in me_” (_John 14:30_)—If possible, to deter Jesus from his work,
by rousing within him vast and agonizing fears of the suffering
and death that lay before him. Yet, in spite of both the desire
and the fear with which his holy soul was moved, he was “_without
sin_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The tree on the edge of the precipice is
fiercely blown by the winds: the strain upon the roots is
tremendous, but the roots hold. Even in Gethsemane and on Calvary,
Christ never prays for forgiveness, he only imparts it to others.
See Ullman, Sinlessness of Jesus; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 2:7-17, 126-136, esp. 135, 136; Schaff, Person of Christ,
51-72; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 3:330-349.

(_c_) Ideal human nature,—furnishing the moral pattern which man is
progressively to realize, although within limitations of knowledge and of
activity required by his vocation as the world’s Redeemer.

_Psalm 8:4-8_—“_thou hast made him but little lower than God, And
crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things
under his feet_”—a description of the ideal man, which finds its
realization only in Christ. _Heb. 2:6-10_—“_But now we see not yet
all things subjected to him. But we behold him who hath been made
a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor._” _1 Cor.
15:45_—“_The first ... Adam ... The last Adam_”—implies that the
second Adam realized the full concept of humanity, which failed to
be realized in the first Adam; so _verse 49_—“_as we have borne
the image of the earthly_ [man], _we shall also bear the image of
the heavenly_” [man]. _2 Cor. 3:18_—“_the glory of the Lord_” is
the pattern, into whose likeness we are to be changed. _Phil
3:21_—“_who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that
it may be conformed to the body of his glory_”; _Col. 1:18_—“_that
in all things he might have the pre-eminence_”; _1 Pet.
2:21_—“_suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should
follow his steps_”; _1 John 3:3_—“_every one that hath this hope
set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure._”

The phrase “_Son of man_” (_John 5:27_; _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_, Com. of
Pusey, _in loco_, and Westcott, in Bible Com. on John, 32-35)
seems to intimate that Christ answers to the perfect idea of
humanity, as it at first existed in the mind of God. Not that he
was surpassingly beautiful in physical form; for the only way to
reconcile the seemingly conflicting intimations is to suppose that
in all outward respects he took our average humanity—at one time
appearing without form or comeliness (_Is. 52:2_), and aged before
his time (_John 8:57_—“_Thou art not yet fifty years old_”), at
another time revealing so much of his inward grace and glory that
men were attracted and awed (_Ps. 45:2_—“_Thou art fairer than the
children of men_”; _Luke 4:22_—“_the words of grace which
proceeded out of his mouth_”; _Mark 10:32_—“_Jesus was going
before them: and they were amazed; and they that followed were
afraid_”; _Mat. 17:1-8_—the account of the transfiguration).
Compare the Byzantine pictures of Christ with those of the Italian
painters,—the former ascetic and emaciated, the latter types of
physical well-being. Modern pictures make Jesus too exclusively a
Jew. Yet there is a certain truth in the words of Mozoomdar:
“Jesus was an Oriental, and we Orientals understand him. He spoke
in figure. We understand him. He was a mystic. You take him
literally: you make an Englishman of him.” So Japanese Christians
will not swallow the Western system of theology, because they say
that this would be depriving the world of the Japanese view of
Christ.

But in all spiritual respects Christ was perfect. In him are
united all the excellences of both the sexes, of all temperaments
and nationalities and characters. He possesses, not simply passive
innocence, but positive and absolute holiness, triumphant through
temptation. He includes in himself all objects and reasons for
affection and worship; so that, in loving him, “love can never
love too much.” Christ’s human nature, therefore, and not human
nature as it is in us, is the true basis of ethics and of
theology. This absence of narrow individuality, this ideal,
universal manhood, could not have been secured by merely natural
laws of propagation,—it was secured by Christ’s miraculous
conception; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst. Doct., 3:344).
John G. Whittier, on the Birmingham philanthropist, Joseph Sturge:
“Tender as woman, manliness and meekness In him were so allied,
That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a
single side.”

Seth, Ethical Principles, 420—“The secret of the power of the
moral Ideal is the conviction which it carries with it that it is
no _mere_ ideal, but the expression of the supreme Reality.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 364—“The _a priori_ only
outlines a _possible_, and does not determine what shall be
_actual_ within the limits of the possible. If experience is to be
possible, it must take on certain forms, but those forms are
compatible with an infinite variety of experience.” No _a priori_
truths or ideals can guarantee Christianity. We want a historical
basis, an actual Christ, a _realization_ of the divine ideal.
“Great men,” says Amiel, “are the true men.” Yes, we add, but only
Christ, the greatest man, shows what the true man is. The heavenly
perfection of Jesus discloses to us the greatness of our own
possible being, while at the same time it reveals our infinite
shortcoming and the source from which all restoration must come.

Gore, Incarnation, 168—“Jesus Christ is the catholic man. In a
sense, all the greatest men have overlapped the boundaries of
their time. ‘The truly great Have all one age, and from one
visible space Shed influence. They, both in power and act Are
permanent, and time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them,
they in it.’ But in a unique sense the manhood of Jesus is
catholic; because it is exempt, not from the limitations which
belong to manhood, but from the limitations which make our manhood
narrow and isolated, merely local or national.” Dale, Ephesians,
42—“Christ is a servant and something more. There is an ease, a
freedom, a grace, about his doing the will of God, which can
belong only to a Son.... There is nothing constrained ... he was
born to it.... He does the will of God as a child does the will of
its father, naturally, as a matter of course, almost without
thought.... No irreverent familiarity about his communion with the
Father, but also no trace of fear, or even of wonder.... Prophets
had fallen to the ground when the divine glory was revealed to
them, but Christ stands calm and erect. A subject may lose his
self-possession in the presence of his prince, but not a son.”

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 148—“What once he had perceived, he
thenceforth knew. He had no opinions, no conjectures; we are never
told that he forgot, nor even that he remembered, which would
imply a degree of forgetting; we are not told that he arrived at
truths by the process of reasoning them out; but he reasons them
out for others. It is not recorded that he took counsel or formed
plans; but he desired, and he purposed, and he did one thing with
a view to another.” On Christ, as the ideal man, see
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 307-336; F. W. Robertson,
Sermon on The Glory of the Divine Son, 2nd Series, Sermon XIX;
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 22-99; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:25;
Moorhouse, Nature and Revelation, 37; Tennyson, Introduction to In
Memoriam; Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:148-154, and 2:excursus iv;
Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332; Thomas Hughes, The
Manliness of Christ; Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 121-145;
Tyler, in Bib. Sac., 22:51, 620; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:451
_sq._

(_d_) A human nature that found its personality only in union with the
divine nature,—in other words, a human nature impersonal, in the sense
that it had no personality separate from the divine nature, and prior to
its union therewith.

By the impersonality of Christ’s human nature, we mean only that
it had no personality before Christ took it, no personality before
its union with the divine. It was a human nature whose
consciousness and will were developed only in union with the
personality of the Logos. The Fathers therefore rejected the word
ἀνυποστασία, and substituted the word ἐνυποστασία,—they favored
not _un_personality but _in_personality. In still plainer terms,
the Logos did not take into union with himself an already
developed human person, such as James, Peter, or John, but human
nature before it had become personal or was capable of receiving a
name. It reached its personality only in union with his own divine
nature. Therefore we see in Christ not two persons—a human person
and a divine person—but one person, and that person possessed of a
human nature as well as of a divine. For proof of this, see pages
683-700, also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308.

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 136—“We count it no defect in our
bodies that they have no personal subsistence apart from
ourselves, and that, if separated from ourselves, they are
nothing. They share in a true personal life because we, whose
bodies they are, are persons. What happens to them happens to us.”
In a similar manner the personality of the Logos furnished the
organizing principle of Jesus’ two-fold nature. As he looked
backward he could see himself dwelling in eternity with God, so
far as his divine nature was concerned. But as respects his
humanity he could remember that it was not eternal,—it had had its
beginnings in time. Yet this humanity had never had a separate
personal existence,—its personality had been developed only in
connection with the divine nature. Göschel, quoted in Dorner’s
Person of Christ, 5:170—“Christ _is_ humanity; we have it; he is
it entirely; we participate therein. His personality precedes and
lies at the basis of the personality of the race and its
individuals. As idea, he is implanted in the whole of humanity; he
lies at the basis of every human consciousness, without however
attaining realization in an individual; for this is only possible
in the entire race at the end of the times.”

Emma Marie Caillard, on Man in the Light of Evolution, in Contemp.
Rev., Dec. 1893: 873-881—“Christ is not only the goal of the race
which is to be conformed to him, but he is also the vital
principle which moulds each individual of that race into its own
similitude. The perfect type exists potentially through all the
intermediate stages by which it is more and more nearly
approached, and, if it did not exist, neither could they. There
could be no development of an absent life. The goal of man’s
evolution, the perfect type of manhood, is Christ. He exists and
always has existed potentially in the race and in the individual,
equally before as after his visible incarnation, equally in the
millions of those who do not, as in the far fewer millions of
those who do, bear his name. In the strictest sense of the words,
he is the life of man, and that in a far deeper and more intimate
sense than he can be said to be the life of the universe.” Dale,
Christian Fellowship, 159—“Christ’s incarnation was not an
isolated and abnormal wonder. It was God’s witness to the true and
ideal relation of all men to God.” The incarnation was no detached
event,—it was the issue of an eternal process of utterance on the
part of the Word “_whose goings forth are from of old, from
everlasting_” (_Micah 5:2_).

(_e_) A human nature germinal, and capable of self-communication,—so
constituting him the spiritual head and beginning of a new race, the
second Adam from whom fallen man individually and collectively derives new
and holy life.

In _Is. 9:6_, Christ is called “_Everlasting Father_.” In _Is.
53:10_, it is said that “_he shall see his seed_.” In _Rev.
22:16_, he calls himself “_the root_” as well as “_the offspring
of David_.” See also _John 5.21_—“_the Son also giveth life to
whom he will_”; _15:1_—“_I am the true vine_”—whose roots are
planted in heaven, not on earth; the vine-man, from whom as its
stock the new life of humanity is to spring, and into whom the
half-withered branches of the old humanity are to be grafted that
they may have life divine. See Trench, Sermon on Christ, the True
Vine, in Hulsean Lectures. _John 17:2_—“_thou gavest him authority
over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, he should
give eternal life_”; _1 Cor. 15:45_—“_the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit_”—here “_spirit_” = not the Holy Spirit, nor
Christ’s divine nature, but “the ego of his total divine-human
personality.”

_Eph. 5:23_—“_Christ also is the head of the church_” = the head
to which all the members are united, and from which they derive
life and power. Christ calls the disciples his “_little children_”
(_John 13:33_); when he leaves them they are “_orphans_” (_14:18_
marg.). “He represents himself as a father of children, no less
than as a brother” (_20:17_—“_my brethren_”; _cf._ _Heb.
2:11_—“_brethren_”, and _13_—“_Behold, I and the children whom God
hath given me_”; see Westcott, Com. on _John 13:33_). The new race
is propagated after the analogy of the old; the first Adam is the
source of the physical, the second Adam of spiritual, life; the
first Adam the source of corruption, the second of holiness. Hence
_John 12:24_—“_if it die, it beareth much fruit_”; _Mat. 10:37_
and _Luke 14:26_—“_He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me_” = none is worthy of me, who prefers his old
natural ancestry to his new spiritual descent and relationship.
Thus Christ is not simply the noblest embodiment of the old
humanity, but also the fountain-head and beginning of a new
humanity, the new source of life for the race. _Cf._ _1 Tim.
2:15_—“_she shall be saved through the child-bearing_”—which
brought Christ into the world. See Wilberforce, Incarnation,
227-241; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 638-664; Dorner, Glaubenslehre,
2:451 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:349 _sq._).

Lightfoot on _Col. 1:18_—“_who is the beginning, the fruits from
the dead_”—“Here ἀρχή = 1. priority in time. Christ was first
fruits of the dead (_1 Cor. 15:20, 23_); 2. originating power, not
only _principium principiatum_, but also _principium principians_.
As he _is_ first with respect to the universe, so he _becomes_
first with respect to the church; _cf._ _Heb. 7:15, 16_—‘_another
priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal
commandment but after the power of an endless life_’.” Paul
teaches that “_the head of every man is Christ_” (_1 Cor. 11:3_),
and that “_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_”
(_Col. 2:9_). Whiton, Gloria Patri, 88-92, remarks on _Eph. 1:10_,
that God’s purpose is “_to sum up all things in Christ, the things
in the heavens, and the things upon the earth_”—to bring all
things to a head (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι). History is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life, whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ. In him the before unconscious
sonship of the world awakes to consciousness of the Father. He is
worthiest to bear the name of _the_ Son of God, in a preëminent,
but not exclusive right. We agree with these words of Whiton, if
they mean that Christ is the only giver of life to man as he is
the only giver of life to the universe.

Hence Christ is the only ultimate authority in religion. He
reveals himself in nature, in man, in history, in Scripture, but
each of these is only a mirror which reflects _him_ to us. In each
case the mirror is more or less blurred and the image obscured,
yet _he_ appears in the mirror notwithstanding. The mirror is
useless unless there is an eye to look into it, and an object to
be seen in it. The Holy Spirit gives the eyesight, while Christ
himself, living and present, furnishes the object (_James
1:23-25_; _2 Cor. 3:18_; _1 Cor. 13:12_).

Over against mankind is Christ-kind; over against the fallen and
sinful race is the new race created by Christ’s indwelling.
Therefore only when he ascended with his perfected manhood could
he send the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit which makes men
children of God is the Spirit of Christ. Christ’s humanity now, by
virtue of its perfect union with Deity, has become universally
communicable. It is as consonant with evolution to derive
spiritual gifts from the second Adam, a solitary source, as it is
to derive the natural man from the first Adam, a solitary source;
see George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409; and A. H. Strong, Christ
in Creation, 174.

Simon, Reconciliation, 308—“Every man is in a true sense
essentially of divine nature—even as Paul teaches, θεῖον γένος
(_Acts 17:29_).... At the centre, as it were, enswathed in fold
after fold, after the manner of a bulb, we discern the living
divine spark, impressing us qualitatively if not quantitatively,
with the absoluteness of the great sun to which it belongs.” The
idea of truth, beauty, right, has in it an absolute and divine
quality. It comes from God, yet from the depths of our own nature.
It is the evidence that Christ, “_the light that lighteth every
man_” (_John 1:9_), is present and is working within us.

Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:272—“That the divine idea of
man as ‘_the son of his love_’ (_Col. 1:13_), and of humanity as
the kingdom of this Son of God, is the immanent final cause of all
existence and development even in the prior world of nature, this
has been the fundamental thought of the Christian Gnosis since the
apostolic age, and I think that no philosophy has yet been able to
shake or to surpass this thought—the corner stone of an idealistic
view of the world.” But Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of
Doctrine, 10, says of Pfleiderer and Ritschl: “Both recognize
Christ as morally perfect and as the head of the Christian Church.
Both deny his pre-existence and his essential Deity. Both reject
the traditional conception of Christ as an atoning Redeemer.
Ritschl calls Christ God, though inconsistently; Pfleiderer
declines to say one thing when he seems to mean another.”

The passages here alluded to abundantly confute the Docetic denial of
Christ’s veritable human body, and the Apollinarian denial of Christ’s
veritable human soul. More than this, they establish the reality and
integrity of Christ’s human nature, as possessed of all the elements,
faculties, and powers essential to humanity.

2. The Deity of Christ.

The reality and integrity of Christ’s divine nature have been sufficiently
proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the
evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:

(_a_) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.

_John 3:13_—“_the Son of man, who is in heaven_”—a passage with
clearly indicates Christ’s consciousness, at certain times in his
earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was
also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B,
omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see
Broadus, in Hovey’s Com. on _John 3:13_]; _8:58_—“_Before Abraham
was born, I am_”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in
which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but
in which he can apply to himself the name “_I am_” of the eternal
God; _14:9, 10_—“_Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou
not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;
how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am
in the Father, and the Father in me?_”

Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances
of Jesus’ supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus’ knowledge of Peter
(_John 1:42_); 2. his finding of Philip (_1:43_); 3. his
recognition of Nathanael (_1:47-50_); 4. of the woman of Samaria
(_4:17-19, 39_); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (_Luke 5:6-9_;
_John 21:6_); 6. death of Lazarus (_John 11:14_); 7. of the ass’s
colt (_Mat. 21:2_); 8. of the upper room (_Mark 14:15_); 9. of
Peter’s denial (_Mat. 26:34_); 10. of the manner of his own death
(_John 12:33_; _18:32_); 11. of the manner of Peter’s death (_John
21:19_); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (_Mat. 24:2_).

Jesus does not say “our Father” but “_my Father_” (_John 20:17_).
Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets,
because he is the “_beloved Son_” of God (_Luke 20:13_). He knows
God’s purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of
God (_Mark 13:32_). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone
can reveal, the Father (_Mat. __ 11:27_). There to clearly
something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (_John
1:14_—“_only begotten_”; _Heb. 1:6_—“_first begotten_”). See
Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in
Theology, 33.

(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.

_John 2:24, 25_—“_But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for
that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one
should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was
in man_”; _18:4_—“_Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that
were coming upon him, went forth_”; _Mark 4:39_—“_he awoke, and
rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the
wind ceased, and there was a great calm_”; _Mat. 9:6_—“_But that
ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive
sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up
thy bed, and go unto thy house_”; _Mark 2:7_—“_Why doth this man
thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even
God?_”

It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of
Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham,
Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon,
Decline and Fall, chap. xvi. “Christ is all in all. The prince in
the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but
that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace,
then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ’s being
and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in,
not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world
of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see
A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference,
April 23, 1900.

Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call
gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the
gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any
world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center
in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many
are made one by giving the one for the many.” “Subtlest thought
shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish,
systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no
after age will e’er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou
only Art life’s guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across
the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”

But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a
knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited
furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the
Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.

Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand’s Memoirs): “I think I
understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these
[heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is
like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.” See other testimonies
in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol.,
cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that “Christ communed with God, mind to
mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique” (Martineau, Types,
1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human
being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest
distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the
fact that the phrase “Son of man” (_John 5:27_; _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_)
itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been
an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man,
unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human
being call himself the same? When one takes this for his
characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is
something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his
original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also
Son of God.

It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that
Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ’s Godhead,
and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity
of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life,
and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief
that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it
into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and
punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave
to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of
Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment
witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ’s humanity must have some
human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the
ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints,
and the “real presence” of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for,
unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for
us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the Father.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary
and the saints took Christ’s place as intercessors in heaven;
transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.” It might
almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.

Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums: “It is no paradox, and
neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual
position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the
Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;
_i. e._, Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the
gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll,
The Church’s One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus’
own words: “_Come unto me_” (_Mat. 11:28_); “_the Son of man ...
shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be
gathered all the nations_” (_Mat. 25:31, 32_); “_he that hath seen
me hath seen the Father_” (_John 14:9_); “_he that obeyeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him_”
(_John 3:36_). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the
nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does
the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it?
There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ. “Harnack does not
conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in
potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of
its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit
of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over
ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and
he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”
R. W. Gilder: “If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of
all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus
Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him
through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”

On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations
on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence,
gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world,
because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies,
doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as
there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet
airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding
excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really
emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So
that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle
breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations
of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the
fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green
trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his
infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees
and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal
rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace
and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun,
the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we
behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue
sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things
wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his
strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds,
in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light
wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of
his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating
himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so
often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of
Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of
the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of
myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty
of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical
person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the
beauty of man’s body in its perfection, we still see like
emanations of Christ’s divine perfections, although they do not
always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has
them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ
when we see beauty in the human soul.”

On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262,
351; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23;
Bengel on _John 10:30_. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.

III. The Union of the two Natures in one Person.

Distinctly as the Scriptures represent Jesus Christ to have been possessed
of a divine nature and of a human nature, each unaltered in essence and
undivested of its normal attributes and powers, they with equal
distinctness represent Jesus Christ as a single undivided personality in
whom these two natures are vitally and inseparably united, so that he is
properly, not God and man, but the God-man. The two natures are bound
together, not by the moral tie of friendship, nor by the spiritual tie
which links the believer to his Lord, but by a bond unique and
inscrutable, which constitutes them one person with a single consciousness
and will,—this consciousness and will including within their possible
range both the human nature and the divine.

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 79-81, would give up speaking of the union
of God _and_ man; for this, he says, involves the fallacy of two
natures. He would speak rather of the manifestation of God _in_
man. The ordinary Unitarian insists that Christ was “a mere man.”
As if there could be such a thing as _mere_ man, exclusive of
aught above him and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. We
can sympathize with Whiton’s objection to the phrase “God _and_
man,” because of its implication of an imperfect union. But we
prefer the term “God-man” to the phrase “God _in_ man,” for the
reason that this latter phrase might equally describe the union of
Christ with every believer. Christ is “the only begotten,” in a
sense that every believer is not. Yet we can also sympathize with
Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:115—“Alas that a Church that has
so divine a service should keep its long list of Articles! I am
strengthened more than ever in my opinion that there is only
needed, that there only should be, one, _viz_., ‘I believe that
Christ is both God and man.’ ”

1. Proof of this Union.

(_a_) Christ uniformly speaks of himself, and is spoken of, as a single
person. There is no interchange of “I” and “thou” between the human and
the divine natures, such as we find between the persons of the Trinity
(John 17:23). Christ never uses the plural number in referring to himself,
unless it be in John 3:11—“we speak that we do know,”—and even here “we”
is more probably used as inclusive of the disciples. 1 John 4:2—“is come
in the flesh”—is supplemented by John 1:14—“became flesh”; and these texts
together assure us that Christ so came in human nature as to make that
nature an element in his single personality.

_John 17:23_—“_I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send
me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me_”; _3:11_—“_We speak
that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God_”;
_John 1:14_—“_And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us_”—he
so came in human nature that human nature and himself formed, not
two persons, but one person.

In the Trinity, the Father is objective to the Son, the Son to the
Father, and both to the Spirit. But Christ’s divinity is never
objective to his humanity, nor his humanity to his divinity.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 97—“He is not so much God
_and_ man, as God _in_, and _through_, and _as_ man. He is one
indivisible personality throughout.... We are to study the divine
in and through the human. By looking for the divine side by side
with the human, instead of discerning the divine within the human,
we miss the significance of them both.” We mistake when we say
that certain words of Jesus with regard to his ignorance of the
day of the end (_Mark 13:32_) were spoken by his human nature,
while certain other words with regard to his being in heaven at
the same time that he was on earth (_John 3:13_) were spoken by
his divine nature. There was never any separation of the human
from the divine, or of the divine from the human,—all Christ’s
words were spoken, and all Christ’s deeds were done, by the one
person, the God-man. See Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 49-100.

(_b_) The attributes and powers of both natures are ascribed to the one
Christ, and conversely the works and dignities of the one Christ are
ascribed to either of the natures, in a way inexplicable, except upon the
principle that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united
in a single person (examples of the former usage are Rom. 1:3 and 1 Pet.
3:18; of the latter, 1 Tim. 2:5 and Heb. 1:2, 3). Hence we can say, on the
one hand, that the God-man existed before Abraham, yet was born in the
reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that Jesus Christ wept, was weary, suffered,
died, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; on the other hand,
that a divine Savior redeemed us upon the cross, and that the human Christ
is present with his people even to the end of the world (Eph. 1:23; 4:10;
Mat. 28:20).

_Rom. 1:3_—“_his Son, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh_”; _1 Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once
... being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and men,
himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 1:2, 3_—“_his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things ... who being the effulgence of his
glory ... when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the
right hand of the Majesty on high_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_put all
things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that filleth all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same
also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill
all things_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world._”

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 142-145—“Mary was Theotokos, but she
was not the mother of Christ’s Godhood, but of his humanity. We
speak of the blood of God the Son, but it is not as God that he
has blood. The hands of the babe Jesus made the worlds, only in
the sense that he whose hands they were was the Agent in
creation.... Spirit and body in us are not merely put side by
side, and insulated from each other. The spirit does not have the
rheumatism, and the reverent body does not commune with God. The
reason why they affect each other is because they are equally
ours.... Let us avoid sensuous, fondling, modes of addressing
Christ—modes which dishonor him and enfeeble the soul of the
worshiper.... Let us also avoid, on the other hand, such phrases
as ‘the dying God’, which loses the manhood in the Godhead.”
Charles H. Spurgeon remarked that people who “dear” everybody
reminded him of the woman who said she had been reading in “dear
Hebrews.”

(_c_) The constant Scriptural representations of the infinite value of
Christ’s atonement and of the union of the human race with God which has
been secured in him are intelligible only when Christ is regarded, not as
a man of God, but as the God-man, in whom the two natures are so united
that what each does has the value of both.

_1 John 2:2_—“_he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for
ours only, but also for the whole world,_”—as John in his gospel
proves that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word, God, so in his
first Epistle he proves that the Son of God, the Word, God, has
become man; _Eph. 2:16-18_—“_might reconcile them both_ [Jew and
Gentile] _in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and he came and preached peace to you that were
far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we both
have our access in one Spirit unto the Father_”; _21, 22_—“_in
whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for
a habitation of God in the Spirit_”; _2 Pet. 1:4_—“_that through
these_ [promises] _ye may become partakers of the divine nature._”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:107—“We cannot separate
Christ’s divine from his human acts, without rending in twain the
unity of his person and life.”

(_d_) It corroborates this view to remember that the universal Christian
consciousness recognizes in Christ a single and undivided personality, and
expresses this recognition in its services of song and prayer.

The foregoing proof of the union of a perfect human nature and of a
perfect divine nature in the single person of Jesus Christ suffices to
refute both the Nestorian separation of the natures and the Eutychian
confounding of them. Certain modern forms of stating the doctrine of this
union, however—forms of statement into which there enter some of the
misconceptions already noticed—need a brief examination, before we proceed
to our own attempt at elucidation.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:300-308)—“Three
ideas are included in incarnation: (1) assumption of human nature
on the part of the Logos (_Heb. 2:14_—‘_partook __ of ... flesh
and blood_’; _2 Cor. 5:19_—‘_God was in Christ_’; _Col. 2:9_—‘_in
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_’); (2) new
creation of the second Adam, by the Holy Ghost and power of the
Highest (_Rom. 5:14_—‘_Adam’s’ transgression, who is a figure of
him that was to come_’; _1 Cor. 15:22_—‘_as in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall all be made alive_’; _15:45_—‘_The first man
Adam became a living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving
Spirit_’; _Luke 1:35_—‘_the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee_’; _Mat.
1:20_—‘_that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit_’);
(3) becoming flesh, without contraction of deity or humanity (_1
Tim. 3:16_—‘_who was manifested in the flesh_’; _1 John
4:2_—‘_Jesus Christ is come in the flesh_’; _John 6:41, 51_—‘_I am
the bread which came down out of heaven.... I am the living
bread_’; _2 John 7_—‘_Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh_’; _John
1:14_—‘_the word became flesh_’). This last text cannot mean: The
Logos ceased to be what he was, and began to be only man. Nor can
it be a mere theophany, in human form. The reality of the humanity
is intimated, as well as the reality of the Logos.”

The Lutherans hold to a communion of the natures, as well as to an
impartation of their properties: (1) _genus
idiomaticum_—impartation of attributes of both natures to the one
person; (2) _genus apotelesmaticum_ (from ἀποτέλεσμα, “that which
is finished or completed,” _i. e._, Jesus’ work)—attributes of the
one person imparted to each of the constituent natures. Hence Mary
may be called “the mother of God,” as the Chalcedon symbol
declares, “as to his humanity,” and what each nature did has the
value of both; (3) _genus majestaticum_—attributes of one nature
imparted to the other, yet so that the divine nature imparts to
the human, not the human to the divine. The Lutherans do not
believe in a _genus tapeinoticon_, _i. e._, that the human
elements communicated themselves to the divine. The only
communication of the human was to the person, not to the divine
nature, of the God-man. Examples of this third _genus
majestaticum_ are found is _John 3:13_—“_no one hath ascended into
heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man,
who is in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and
B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]; _5:27_—“_he gave him authority to
execute judgment, because he is a son of man._” Of the explanation
that this is the figure of speech called “_allæosis,_” Luther
says: “_Allæosis_ est larva quædam diaboli, secundum cujus
rationes ego certe nolim esse Christianus.”

The _genus majestaticum_ is denied by the Reformed Church, on the
ground that it does not permit a clear distinction of the natures.
And this is one great difference between it and the Lutheran
Church. So Hooker, in commenting upon the Son of man’s “ascending
up where he was before,” says: “By the ‘_Son of man_’ must be
meant the whole person of Christ, who, being man upon earth,
filled heaven with his glorious presence; but not according to
that nature for which the title of man is given him.” For the
Lutheran view of this union and its results in the communion of
natures, see Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 195-197;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:24, 25. For the Reformed
view, see Turretin, loc. 13, quæst. 8; Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
2:387-397, 407-418.

2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.

A. Theory of an incomplete humanity.—Gess and Beecher hold that the
immaterial part in Christ’s humanity is only contracted and metamorphosed
deity.

The advocates of this view maintain that the divine Logos reduced himself
to the condition and limits of human nature, and thus literally became a
human soul. The theory differs from Apollinarianism, in that it does not
necessarily presuppose a trichotomous view of man’s nature. While
Apollinarianism, however, denied the human origin only of Christ’s πνεῦμα,
this theory extends the denial to his entire immaterial being,—his body
alone being derived from the Virgin. It is held, in slightly varying
forms, by the Germans, Hofmann and Ebrard, as well as by Gess; and Henry
Ward Beecher was its chief representative in America.

Gess holds that Christ gave up his eternal holiness and divine
self-consciousness, to become man, so that he never during his
earthly life thought, spoke, or wrought as God, but was at all
times destitute of divine attributes. See Gess, Scripture Doctrine
of the Person of Christ; and synopsis of his view, by Reubelt, in
Bib. Sac., 1870:1-32; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:234-241, and 2:20;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:144-151, and in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Jesus Christ, der Gottmensch; also Liebner, Christliche Dogmatik.
Henry Ward Beecher, in his Life of Jesus the Christ, chap. 3,
emphasizes the word “_flesh,_” in _John 1:14_ and declares the
passage to mean that the divine Spirit enveloped himself in a
human _body_, and in that condition was subject to the
indispensable limitations of material laws. All these advocates of
the view hold that Deity was dormant, or paralyzed, in Christ
during his earthly life. Its essence is there, but not its
efficiency at any time.

Against this theory we urge the following objections:

(_a_) It rests upon a false interpretation of the passage John 1:14—ὁ
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο. The word σάρξ here has its common New Testament
meaning. It designates neither soul nor body alone, but human nature in
its totality (_cf._ John 3:6—τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς σάρξ ἐστιν;
Rom. 7:18—οὐκ οἰκεῖ ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, ἀγαθόν). That
ἐγένετο does not imply a transmutation of the λόγος into human nature, or
into a human soul, is evident from ἐσκήνωσεν which follows—an allusion to
the Shechinah of the Mosaic tabernacle; and from the parallel passage 1
John 4:2—ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα—where we are taught not only the oneness of
Christ’s person, but the distinctness of the constituent natures.

_John 1:14_—“_the Word became flesh, and dwelt_ [tabernacled]
_among us, and we behold his glory_”; _3:6_—“_That which is born
of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom., 7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh._” Since “_flesh_,” in Scriptural usage, denotes
human nature in its entirety, there is as little reason to infer
from these passages a change of the Logos into a human body, as a
change of the Logos into a human soul. There is no curtailed
humanity in Christ. One advantage of the monistic doctrine is that
it avoids this error. Omnipresence is the presence of the whole of
God in every place. _Ps. 85:9_—“_Surely his salvation is nigh them
that fear him, That glory may dwell in our land_”—was fulfilled
when Christ, the true Shekinah, tabernacled in human flesh and men
“_beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth_” (_John 1:14_). And Paul can say in _2
Cor. 12:9_—“_Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may spread a tabernacle over
me._”

(_b_) It contradicts the two great classes of Scripture passages already
referred to, which assert on the one hand the divine knowledge and power
of Christ and his consciousness of oneness with the Father, and on the
other hand the completeness of his human nature and its derivation from
the stock of Israel and the seed of Abraham (Mat. 1:1-16; Heb. 2:16). Thus
it denies both the true humanity, and the true deity, of Christ.

See the Scripture passages cited in proof of the Deity of Christ,
pages 305-315. Gess himself acknowledges that, if the passages in
which Jesus avers his divine knowledge and power and his
consciousness of oneness with the Father refer to his earthly
life, his theory is overthrown. “Apollinarianism had a certain
sort of grotesque grandeur, in giving to the human body and soul
of Christ an infinite, divine πνεῦμα. It maintained at least the
divine side of Christ’s person. But the theory before us denies
both sides.” While it so curtails deity that it is no proper
deity, it takes away from humanity all that is valuable in
humanity; for a manhood that consists only in body is no proper
manhood. Such manhood is like the “half length” portrait which
depicted only the _lower half_ of the man. _Mat. 1:1-16_, the
genealogy of Jesus, and _Heb. 2:16_—“_taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”—intimate that Christ took all that belonged to human
nature.

(_c_) It is inconsistent with the Scriptural representations of God’s
immutability, in maintaining that the Logos gives up the attributes of
Godhead, and his place and office as second person of the Trinity, in
order to contract himself into the limits of humanity. Since attributes
and substance are correlative terms, it is impossible to hold that the
substance of God is in Christ, so long as he does not possess divine
attributes. As we shall see hereafter, however, the possession of divine
attributes by Christ does not necessarily imply his constant exercise of
them. His humiliation indeed, consisted in his giving up their independent
exercise.

See Dorner, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1:361; 2:440; 3:579; esp. 1:390-412—“Gess holds that,
during the thirty-three years of Jesus’ earthly life, the Trinity
was altered; the Father no more poured his fulness into the Son;
the Son no more, with the Father, sent forth the Holy Spirit; the
world was upheld and governed by Father and Spirit alone, without
the mediation of the Son; the Father ceased to beget the Son. He
says the Father alone has _aseity_; he is the only Monas. The
Trinity is a family, whose head is the Father, but whose number
and condition is variable. To Gess, it is indifferent whether the
Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or (as during
Jesus’ life) of only one. But this is a Trinity in which two
members are accidental. A Trinity that can get along without one
of its members is not the Scriptural Trinity. The Father depends
on the Son, and the Spirit depends on the Son, as much as the Son
depends on the Father. To take away the Son is to take away the
Father and the Spirit. This giving up of the actuality of his
attributes, even of his holiness, on the part of the Logos, is in
order to make it possible for Christ to sin. But can we ascribe
the possibility of sin to a being who is really God? The reality
of temptation requires us to postulate a veritable human soul.”

(_d_) It is destructive of the whole Scriptural scheme of salvation, in
that it renders impossible any experience of human nature on the part of
the divine,—for when God becomes man he ceases to be God; in that it
renders impossible any sufficient atonement on the part of human
nature,—for mere humanity, even though its essence be a contracted and
dormant deity, is not capable of a suffering which shall have infinite
value; in that it renders impossible any proper union of the human race
with God in the person of Jesus Christ,—for where true deity and true
humanity are both absent, there can be no union between the two.

See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 1:390—“Upon this theory only
an exhibitory atonement can be maintained. There is no real
humanity that, in the strength of divinity, can bring a sacrifice
to God. Not substitution, therefore, but obedience, on this view,
reconciles us to God. Even if it is said that God’s Spirit is the
real soul in all men, this will not help the matter; for we should
then have to make an essential distinction between the indwelling
of the Spirit in the unregenerate, the regenerate, and Christ,
respectively. But in that case we lose the likeness between
Christ’s nature and our own,—Christ’s being preëxistent, and ours
not. Without this pantheistic doctrine, Christ’s unlikeness to us
is yet greater; for he is really a wandering God, clothed in a
human body, and cannot properly be called a human soul. We have
then no middle-point between the body and the Godhead; and in the
state of exaltation, we have no manhood at all,—only the infinite
Logos, in a glorified body as his garment.”

Isaac Watts’s theory of a preëxistent humanity in like manner
implies that humanity is originally in deity; it does not proceed
from a human stock, but from a divine; between the human and the
divine there is no proper distinction; hence there can be no
proper redeeming of humanity; see Bib. Sac., 1875:421. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 226—“If Christ does not take a human πνεῦμα,
he cannot be a high-priest who feels with us in all our
infirmities, having been tempted like us.” Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 138—“The conversion of the Godhead into flesh would have
only added one more man to the number of men—a sinless one,
perhaps, among sinners—but it would have effected no union of God
and men.” On the theory in general, see Hovey, God with Us, 62-69;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:430-440; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:386-408; Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 356-359; Bruce,
Humiliation of Christ, 187, 230; Schaff, Christ and Christianity,
115-119.

B. Theory of a gradual incarnation.—Dorner and Rothe hold that the union
between the divine and the human natures is not completed by the
incarnating act.

The advocates of this view maintain that the union between the two natures
is accomplished by a gradual communication of the fulness of the divine
Logos to the man Christ Jesus. This communication is mediated by the human
consciousness of Jesus. Before the human consciousness begins, the
personality of the Logos is not yet divine-human. The personal union
completes itself only gradually, as the human consciousness is
sufficiently developed to appropriate the divine.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:660 (Syst. Doct., 4:125)—“In order that
Christ might show his high-priestly love by suffering and death,
the different sides of his personality yet stood to one another in
relative separableness. The divine-human union in him,
accordingly, was before his death not yet completely actualized,
although its completion was from the beginning divinely assured.”
2:431 (Syst. Doct., 3:328)—“In spite of this _becoming_, inside of
the _Unio_, the Logos is from the beginning united with Jesus in
the deepest foundation of his being, and Jesus’ life has ever been
a divine-human one, in that a present receptivity for the Godhead
has never remained without its satisfaction.... Even the
unconscious humanity of the babe turns receptively to the Logos,
as the plant turns toward the light. The initial union makes
Christ already the God-man, but not in such a way as to prevent a
subsequent _becoming_; for surely he did become omniscient and
incapable of death, as he was not at the beginning.”

2:464 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:363 _sq._)—“The actual life of God, as
the Logos, reaches beyond the beginnings of the divine-human life.
For if the _Unio_ is to complete itself by growth, the relation of
impartation and reception must continue. In his personal
consciousness, there was a distinction between duty and being. The
will had to take up practically, and turn into action, each new
revelation or perception of God’s will on the part of intellect or
conscience. He had to maintain, with his will, each revelation of
his nature and work. In his twelfth year, he says: ‘_I must be
about my Father’s business._’ To Satan’s temptation: ‘_Art thou
God’s Son?_’ he must reply with an affirmation that suppresses all
doubt, though he will not prove it by miracle. This moral growth,
as it was the will of the Father, was his task. He hears from his
Father, and obeys. In him, imperfect knowledge was never the same
with false conception. In us, ignorance has error for its obverse
side. But this was never the case with him, though he grew in
knowledge unto the end.” Dorner’s view of the Person of Christ may
be found in his Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 5:248-261;
Glaubenslehre, 2:347-474 (Syst. Doct., 3:243-373).

A summary of his views is also given in Princeton Rev.,
1873:71-87—Dorner illustrates the relation between the humanity
and the deity of Christ by the relation between God and man, in
conscience, and in the witness of the Spirit. “So far as the human
element was immature or incomplete, so far the Logos was not
present. Knowledge advanced to unity with the Logos, and the human
will afterwards confirmed the best and highest knowledge. A
resignation of both the Logos and the human nature to the union is
involved in the incarnation. The growth continues until the idea,
and the reality, of divine humanity perfectly coincide. The
assumption of unity was gradual, in the life of Christ. His
exaltation began with the perfection of this development.” Rothe’s
statement of the theory can be found in his Dogmatik, 2:49-182;
and in Bib. Sac., 27:386.

It is objectionable for the following reasons:

(_a_) The Scripture plainly teaches that that which was born of Mary was
as completely Son of God as Son of man (Luke 1:35); and that in the
incarnating act, and not at his resurrection, Jesus Christ became the
God-man (Phil. 2:7). But this theory virtually teaches the birth of a man
who subsequently and gradually became the God-man, by consciously
appropriating the Logos to whom he sustained ethical relations—relations
with regard to which the Scripture is entirely silent. Its radical error
is that of mistaking an incomplete consciousness of the union for an
incomplete union.

In _Luke 1:35_—“_the holy thing which is begotten shall be called
the Son of God_”—and _Phil. 2:7_—“_emptied himself, taking the
form of servant, being made in the likeness of men_”—we have
evidence that Christ was both Son of God and Son of man from the
very beginning of his earthly life. But, according to Dorner,
before there was any human consciousness, the personality of Jesus
Christ was not divine-human.

(_b_) Since consciousness and will belong to personality, as distinguished
from nature, the hypothesis of a mutual, conscious, and voluntary
appropriation of divinity by humanity and of humanity by divinity, during
the earthly life of Christ, is but a more subtle form of the Nestorian
doctrine of a double personality. It follows, moreover, that as these two
personalities do not become absolutely one until the resurrection, the
death of the man Jesus Christ, to whom the Logos has not yet fully united
himself, cannot possess an infinite atoning efficacy.

Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:68-70, objects to Dorner’s
view, that it “leads us to a man who is in intimate communion with
God,—a man of God, but not a man who is God.” He maintains,
against Dorner, that “the union between the divine and human in
Christ exists before the consciousness of it.” 193-195—Dorner’s
view “makes each element, the divine and the human, long for the
other, and reach its truth and reality only in the other. This, so
far as the divine is concerned, is very like pantheism. Two
_willing_ personalities are presupposed, with ethical relation to
each other,—two persons, at least at the first. Says Dorner: ‘So
long as the manhood is yet unconscious, the person of the Logos is
not yet the central _ego_ of this man. At the beginning, the Logos
does not impart himself, so far as he is person or
self-consciousness. He keeps apart by himself, just in proportion
as the manhood fails in power of perception.’ At the beginning,
then, this man is not yet the God-man; the Logos only works in
him, and on him. ‘The _unio personalis_ grows and completes
itself,—becomes ever more all-sided and complete. Till the
resurrection, there is a relative separability still.’ Thus
Dorner. But the Scripture knows nothing of an ethical relation of
the divine, to the human in Christ’s person. It knows only of one
divine-human subject.” See also Thomasius, 2:80-92.

(_c_) While this theory asserts a final complete union of God and man in
Jesus Christ, it renders this union far more difficult to reason, by
involving the merging of two persons in one, rather than the union of two
natures in one person. We have seen, moreover, that the Scripture gives no
countenance to the doctrine of a double personality during the earthly
life of Christ. The God-man never says: “I and the Logos are one”; “he
that hath seen me hath seen the Logos”; “the Logos is greater than I”; “I
go to the Logos.” In the absence of all Scripture evidence in favor of
this theory, we must regard the rational and dogmatic arguments against it
as conclusive.

Liebner, in Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 3:349-366, urges, against
Dorner, that there is no sign in Scripture of such communion
between the two natures of Christ as exists between the three
persons of the Trinity. Philippi also objects to Dorner’s view:
(1) that it implies a pantheistic identity of essence in both God
and man; (2) that it makes the resurrection, not the birth, the
time when the Word became flesh; (3) that it does not explain how
two personalities can become one; see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:364-380. Philippi quotes Dorner as saying: “The unity of essence
of God and man is the great discovery of this age.” But that
Dorner was no pantheist appears from the following quotations from
his Hist. Doctrine of the Person of Christ, II, 3:5, 23, 69,
115—“Protestant philosophy has brought about the recognition of
the essential connection and unity of the human and the divine....
To the theology of the present day, the divine and human are not
mutually exclusive but connected magnitudes, having an inward
relation to each other and reciprocally confirming each other, by
which view both separation and identification are set aside....
And now the common task of carrying on the union of faculties and
qualities to a union of essence was devolved on both. The
difference between them is that only God has aseity.... Were we to
set our face against every view which represents the divine and
human as intimately and essentially related, we should be wilfully
throwing away the gains of centuries, and returning to a soil
where a Christology is an absolute impossibility.”

See also Dorner, System, 1:123—“Faith postulates a difference
between the world and God, between whom religion seeks a union.
Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself or to its own
representations and thoughts. That would be a monologue; faith
desires a dialogue. Therefore it does not consent with a monism
which recognizes only God or the world (with the ego). The duality
(not the dualism, which is opposed to such monism, but which has
no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity) is in fact a
condition of true and vital unity.” The _unity_ is the foundation
of religion; the _difference_ is the foundation of morality.
Morality and religion are but different manifestations of the same
principle. Man’s moral endeavor is the working of God within him.
God can be revealed only in the perfect character and life of
Jesus Christ. See Jones, Robert Browning, 146.

Stalker, Imago Christi: “Christ was not half a God and half a man,
but he was perfectly God and perfectly man.” Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 95—“The Incarnate did not oscillate between being
God and being man. He was indeed _always_ God, and yet never
otherwise God than as expressed within the possibilities of human
consciousness and character.” He knew that he was something more
than he was as incarnate. His miracles showed what humanity might
become. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 14—“The divinity
of Christ was not that of a divine nature in local or mechanical
juxtaposition with a human, but of a divine nature that suffused,
blended, identified itself with the thoughts, feelings, volitions
of a human individuality. Whatever of divinity could not
organically unite itself with and breathe through a human spirit,
was not and could not be present in one who, whatever else he was,
was really and truly human.” See also Biedermann, Dogmatik,
351-353; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:428-430.

3. The real nature of this Union.

(_a_) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of
Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col.
1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3;
20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ
is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity
itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The
following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in
some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.

_Matt. 11:27_—“_no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither
doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him._” Here it seems to be intimated that
the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of
the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in
some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there
is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity: _Col.
1:27_—“_the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is
Christ in you, the hope of glory_”; _2:2, 3_—“_the mystery of God,
even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
hidden_”; _1 Tim. 3:16_—“_great is the mystery of godliness; He
who was manifested in the flesh_”—here the Vulgate, the Latin
Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the
relative taking the _natural_ gender of its antecedent, and
μυστήριον referring to Christ; _Heb. 2:11_—“_both he that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one_ [not
father, but race, or substance]” (_cf._ _Acts 17:26_—“_he made of
one every nation of men_”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the
race and Christ’s participation in all that belongs to us.

_John 17:3_—“_this is life eternal, that they should know thee the
only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ_”;
_20:27_—“_Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach
hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless,
but believing_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Phil. 3:8, 10_—“_I count all
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which
we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life._”

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander
was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with
universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.” Crane,
Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality
of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.” Pascal: “Jesus
Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything,
and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature
and nothing of himself.” Goethe in his last years wrote: “Humanity
cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian
religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again
disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot
again be dissolved.” H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout
thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence: “Let us come to
Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.” Dean
Stanley never tired of quoting as his own Confession of Faith the
words of John Bunyan: “Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather
he—The man who there was put to shame for me!” And Charles Wesley
wrote on Catholic Love: “Weary of all this wordy strife, These
motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth,
the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at
last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”

“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are
connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters
into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has
been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely
greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the
pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the
universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ
now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the
flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current
and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly
before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the
abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of
the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human
hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the
Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has
been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are
the foundations of God’s throne; that God’s righteousness
everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love
which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the
transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has
demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For
from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is
the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the
overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has
passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly
life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake
Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from
the cross. And Christ’s purpose is, not that we should repeat
Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in
ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards
self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very
life of God” (A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World
Congress, London, July 12, 1905).

(_b_) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one
personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3.
relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ;
4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of
Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles;
on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single
child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much
more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the
manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not
confined to place.

Luther said that we should need “new tongues” before we could
properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with
regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the
problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention.
Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the
divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human
limitations. This is the condition of all revelation. _John
14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the father_”; _Col.
2:9_—“_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_” =
up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the
divine. _Heb. 2:11_ and _Acts 17:26_ both attribute to man a
consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God.
It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will
balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in
the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the
level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God
manifest in the flesh.

Robert Browning, Death in the Desert: “I say, the acknowledgment
of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All
questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee
to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ: “That one Face, far
from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become
my Universe that feels and knows.” “That face,” said Browning to
Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem, “is the face of Christ.
That is how I feel him.” This is his answer to those victims of
nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has
disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God.
He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in
nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law
Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.

(_c_) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ’s person
is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our
experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and
yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other
hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer,
of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly
misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union
and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations
mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them
complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and
heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the
element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons,
not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.

The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul
and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these
illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be
complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be
Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like
the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely
unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But
neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict.
Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and
Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt,
Fund. Truths, 281-334.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are
Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but
because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union
of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and
nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen
in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but
personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in
our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great
orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We
need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the
believer and Christ.” And here too we must confess the
imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two
persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and
without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and
glory.

(_d_) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and
humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the
divine image. Man’s kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a
rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life
is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine,
in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but
that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine
powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral
image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect
image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image
by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and
love.

_2 Pet. 1:4_—“_partakers of the divine nature._” Creation and
providence do not furnish the last limit of God’s indwelling.
Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer
and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and
man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283
(Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity,
as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by
receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant
between God and Israel.” _Ib._, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct.,
3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and
creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as
a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists
only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become
its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that
the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to
be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The
very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their
essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply
dependence. ‘_Deep calleth unto deep_’ (_Ps. 42:7_)—the deep of
the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each
other. ‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’ God’s infinite resources
and man’s infinite need, God’s measureless supply and man’s
boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him
in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual
attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has ‘_first
loved_’ (_1 John 4:19_).

“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first
creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites
with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in
nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or
realization, in union with God. God’s uniting act does not violate
or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God’s
idea, it was meant to be.” Incarnation is therefore the very
fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of
humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere
tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite
fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in
Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.

God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he
could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man,
as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said
that “all minds are of one family.” E. B. Andrews: “Divinity and
humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been
properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement.
Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he
is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If
we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of
the degree.” “Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could
ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the
soul itself divine.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle
may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a
circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.” ...
2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would
not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has
made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite
element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral
excellence.” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist,
190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of
which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the
manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what
humanity is to be when God’s work in the world is done—perfect God
and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”

We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them
as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine
and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential
likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding
of the union between the two. We go further than the writers
quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ,
but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the
God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine
than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both
human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity,
as some of these authors apparently do not. See _Heb. 7:15,
16_—“_another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an
endless life_”; _John 1:4_—“_In him was life; and the life was the
light of men._”

(_e_) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not
involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos
takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already
developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate
existence before its union with the divine. Christ’s human nature is
impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and
self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is
important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is
substance possessed in common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature;
there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately
subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature
of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal,
and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is
equally important to observe that self-consciousness and
self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to
personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two
wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness
and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an
activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the
divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).

The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and
they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their
child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only
one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood
of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double
personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner
illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by the _Holy
Spirit_ in the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable
from the human life into which it enters; and by the _moral
sense_, which is the very presence and power of God in the human
soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see
C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to
understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in
Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to
God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only
Jesus could say: “_Before Abraham was born, I am_” (_John 8:58_);
“_I and the Father are one_” (_John 10:30_).

The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated
by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox
doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of
Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),
“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as
œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions
of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see
Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90. _Nature_ has consciousness and
will, only as it is manifested in _person_. The one person has a
single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at
all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we
do not say Christ’s human nature had no will, but only that it had
none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately
from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine
united; _versus_ Current Discussions in Theology, 5:283.

Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one
ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of
both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better,
illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes
below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of
water. See _Mark 13:32_—“_of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son_”; _Luke
22:42_—“_Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done._” To say that,
although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same
moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse
Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the
natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were
united.

We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est
animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on
Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”;
Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence,
either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”;
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of
self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with
intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.” Dr. E. G.
Robinson defines “nature” as “that substratum or condition of
being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but
which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”

Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward
experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the
soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named,
simply for that reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality,
Human and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived
from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first
of all that which underlies our mental affections and
manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the
source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the
freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.” On
personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of
two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity,
1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:289-308, esp. 328. _Per contra_, see Hovey, God with Us, 66;
Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.

(_f_) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures
makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other
words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human
without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on
earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was
latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen
state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of
humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the
human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form,
knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed
(Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus
permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by
power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine
energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25;
3:13; 20:19).

Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become
divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine;
as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the
light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine
attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our
bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the
body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to
the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to
be humanity.”

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as
light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit
exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union
with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting
and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body
its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy
Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become
divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not
speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human
nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it is
_our_ destiny to become ‘_partakers of the divine nature_’ (_2
Pet. 1:4_). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or
more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through
closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to
the Holy Spirit.”

In _Mat. 3:16_, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not
the descent of a material dove (“_as a dove_”). The dove-like
appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the
Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a
flood into his divine-human consciousness. _John 3:34_—“_for he
giveth not the Spirit by measure_”; _Acts 1:2_—“_after that he had
given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all
that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him_”; _Heb,
9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without blemish onto God._”

When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as
God: _Mat. 17:2_—“_he was transfigured before them_”; _Mark
5:41_—“_Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise_”; _Luke 5:20, 21_—“_Man,
thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?_”—_Luke 6:19_—“_power came forth from him, and healed them
all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested his glory_”; _24, 25_—“_he knew all
men.... he himself knew what was in man_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of
man, who is __ in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with
א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common
reading, see Broadus, in Hovey’s Com., on _John 3:13_];
_20:19_—“_when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the
midst._”

Christ is the “_servant of Jehovah_” (_Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13;
53:11_) and the meaning of παῖς (_Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30_) is not
“child” or “Son”; it is “_servant_,” as in the Revised Version.
But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the “_Lord of the
Spirit_” (_2 Cor. 3:18_—Meyer), giving the Spirit (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him unto you_”), present in the Spirit (_John 14:18_—“_I
come unto you_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_I am with you always, even unto
the the end of the world_”), and working through the Spirit (_1
Cor. 15:45_—“_The last Adam became a life-giving spirit_”); _2
Cor. 3:17_—“_Now the Lord is the Spirit_”. On Christ’s relation to
the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.

Delitzsch: “The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it
were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a
whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the
summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.” Cheyne
on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is
also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N.
T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to
produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world.
Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially
and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never
have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed
name.” We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the
pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and
Upholder of all (_Eph. 1:23_; _Col. 1:16_); the stratum which
rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (_Ps, 8:5, 6_);
then comes Israel as a whole (_Mat. 2:15_); spiritual Israel rests
upon Israel after the flesh (_Is. 42:1-7_); as the acme and cap
stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true
servant of Jehovah and Son of man (_Is. 53:11_; _Mat. 20:28_). We
may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of
another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and
rising to heaven (_Is. 9:6_—“_Everlasting Father_”; _Is.
53:10_—“_he shall see his seed_”; _Rev. 22:16_—“_root and
offspring of David_”; _Heb. 2:13_—“_I and the children whom God
hath given me._”)

(_g_) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that,
although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness,
temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable
of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature
in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue
of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not
in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and
soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart
from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his
divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of
absolutely infinite suffering.

Just as my soul could never suffer the pains of fire if it were
only soul, but can suffer those pains in union with the body, so
the otherwise impassible God can suffer mortal pangs through his
union with humanity, which he never could suffer if he had not
joined himself to my nature. The union between the humanity and
the deity is so close, that deity itself is brought under the
curse and penalty of the law. Because Christ was God, did he pass
unscorched through the fires of Gethsemane and Calvary? Rather let
us say, because Christ was God, he underwent a suffering that was
absolutely infinite. Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:300 _sq._;
Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 24:41; Schöberlein, in Jahrbuch für
deutsche Theologie, 1871:459-501.

A. J. F. Behrends, in The Examiner, April 21, 1898—“Jesus Christ
is God in the form of man; as completely God as if he were not
man; as completely man as if he were not God. He is always divine
and always human.... The infirmities and pains of his body pierced
his divine nature.... The demand of the law was not laid upon
Christ from without, but proceeded from within. It is the
righteousness _in_ him which makes his death necessary.”

(_h_) Necessity of the union.—The union of two natures in one person is
necessary to constitute Jesus Christ a proper mediator between man and
God. His two-fold nature gives him fellowship with both parties, since it
involves an equal dignity with God, and at the same time a perfect
sympathy with man (Heb. 2:17, 18; 4:15, 16). This two-fold nature,
moreover, enables him to present to both God and man proper terms of
reconciliation: being man, he can make atonement for man; being God, his
atonement has infinite value; while both his divinity and his humanity
combine to move the hearts of offenders and constrain them to submission
and love (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25).

_Heb. 2:17,18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be
made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself
hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are
tempted_”; _4:15,16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath
been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us
therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that
we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of
need_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one God, one mediator also between God and
men, himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 7:25_—“_Wherefore also he
is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them._”

Because Christ is man, he can make atonement for man and can
sympathize with man. Because Christ is God, his atonement has
infinite value, and the union which he effects with God is
complete. A merely human Savior could never reconcile or reunite
us to God. But a divine-human Savior meets all our needs. See
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 170-208. As the high priest of old bore
on his mitre the name Jehovah, and on his breastplate the names of
the tribes of Israel, so Christ Jesus is God with us, and at the
same time our propitiatory representative before God. In Virgil’s
Æneid, Dido says well: “Haud ignara malí, miseris succurrere
disco”—“Myself not ignorant of woe, Compassion I have learned to
show.” And Terence uttered almost a Christian word when he wrote:
“Homo sum, et humani nihil a me alienum puto”—“I am a man, and I
count nothing human as foreign to me.” Christ’s experience and
divinity made these words far more true of him than of any merely
human being.

(_i_) The union eternal.—The union of humanity with deity in the person of
Christ is indissoluble and eternal. Unlike the avatars of the East, the
incarnation was a permanent assumption of human nature by the second
person of the Trinity. In the ascension of Christ, glorified humanity has
attained the throne of the universe. By his Spirit, this same divine-human
Savior is omnipresent to secure the progress of his kingdom. The final
subjection of the Son to the Father, alluded to in 1 Cor. 15:28, cannot be
other than the complete return of the Son to his original relation to the
Father; since, according to John 17:5, Christ is again to possess the
glory which he had with the Father before the world was (_cf._ Heb. 1:8;
7:24, 25).

_1 Cor. 15:28_—“_and when all things have been subjected unto him,
then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did
subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all_”; _John
17:5_—“_Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_”;
_7:24_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood
unchangeable._” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:281-283 (Syst. Doct.
3:177-179), holds that there is a present and relative distinction
between the Son’s will, as Mediator, and that of the Father (_Mat.
26:39_—“_not as I will, but as thou wilt_”)—a distinction which
shall cease when Christ becomes Judge (_John 16:26_—“_In that day
ye shall ask in my name: and I say not onto you, that I will pray
the Father for you_”) If Christ’s _reign_ ceased, he would be
inferior to the saints, who are themselves to reign. But they are
to reign only in and with Christ, their head.

The best illustration of the possible meaning of Christ’s giving
up the kingdom is found in the Governor of the East India Company
giving up his authority to the Queen and merging it in that of the
home government, he himself, however, at the same time becoming
Secretary of State for India. So Christ will give up his
vicegerency, but not his mediatorship. Now he reigns by delegated
authority; then he will reign in union with the Father. So
Kendrick, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1890:68-83. Wrightnour: “When the
great remedy has wrought its perfect cure, the physician will no
longer be looked upon as the physician. When the work of
redemption is completed, the mediatorial office of the Son will
cease.” We may add that other offices of friendship and
instruction will then begin.

Melanchthon: “Christ will finish his work as Mediator, and then
will reign as God, immediately revealing to us the Deity.”
Quenstedt, quoted in Schmid, Dogmatik, 293, thinks the giving up
of the kingdom will be only an exchange of outward administration
for inward,—not a surrender of all power and authority, but only
of one mode of exercising it. Hanna, on Resurrection, lect. 4—“It
is not a giving up of his mediatorial authority,—that throne is to
endure forever,—but it is a simple public recognition of the fact
that God is all in all, that Christ is God’s medium of
accomplishing all.” An. Par. Bible, on _1 Cor. 15:28_—“Not his
mediatorial relation to his own people shall be given up; much
less his personal relation to the Godhead, as the divine Word; but
only his mediatorial relation to the world at large.” See also
Edwards, Observations on the Trinity, 85 _sq._ Expositor’s Greek
Testament, on _1 Cor. 15:28_, “affirms no other subjection than is
involved in Sonship.... This implies no inferiority of nature, no
extrusion from power, but the free submission of love ... which is
the essence of the filial spirit which actuated Christ from first
to last.... Whatsoever glory he gains is devoted to the glory and
power of the Father, who glorifies him in turn.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:402 (Syst. Doct., 3:297-299)—“We are not
to imagine incarnations of Christ in the angel-world, or in other
spheres. This would make incarnation only the change of a garment,
a passing theophany; and Christ’s relation to humanity would be a
merely external one.” Bishop of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge as Man, XX—“Are we permitted to believe that
there is something parallel to the progress of our Lord’s humanity
in the state of humiliation, still going on even now, in the state
of exaltation? that it is, in fact, becoming more and more
adequate to the divine nature? See _Col. 1:24_—‘_fill up that
which is lacking_’; _Heb. 10:12, 13_—‘_expecting till his
enemies_’; _1 Cor. 15:28_—‘_when all things have been subjected
unto him._’ ” In our judgment such a conclusion is unwarranted, in
view of the fact that the God-man in his exaltation has the glory
of his preëxistent state (_John 17:5_); that all the heavenly
powers are already subject to him (_Eph. 1:21, 22_); and that he
is now omnipresent (_Mat. 28:20_).

(_j_) Infinite and finite in Christ.—Our investigation of the Scripture
teaching with regard to the Person of Christ leads us to three important
conclusions: 1. that deity and humanity, the infinite and the finite, in
him are not mutually exclusive; 2. that the humanity in Christ differs
from his deity not merely in degree but also in kind; and 3. that this
difference in kind is the difference between the infinite original and the
finite derivative, so that Christ is the source of life, both physical and
spiritual, for all men.

Our doctrine excludes the view that Christ is only quantitatively
different from other men in whom God’s Spirit dwells. He is
qualitatively different, in that he is the source of life, and
they the recipients. Not only is it true that the fulness of the
Godhead is in him alone,—it is also true that he is himself God,
self-revealing and self-communicating, as men are not. Yet we
cannot hold with E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 176-178,
that Christ’s humanity was of one species with his deity, but not
of one substance. We know of but one underlying substance and
ground of being. This one substance is self-limiting, and so
self-manifesting, in Jesus Christ. The determining element is not
the human but the divine. The infinite Source has a finite
manifestation; but in the finite we see the Infinite; _2 Cor.
5:19_—“_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself_”;
_John 14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father._” We can
therefore agree with the following writers who regard all men as
partakers of the life of God, while yet we deny that Christ is
only a man, distinguished from his fellows by having a larger
share in that life than they have.

J. M. Whiton: “How is the divine spirit which is manifest in the
life of the man Christ Jesus to be distinguished, _qua_ divine,
from the same divine spirit as manifested in the life of humanity?
I answer, that in him, the person Christ, dwelleth the _fulness_
of the Godhead bodily. I emphasize _fulness_, and say: The
God-head is alike in the race and in its spiritual head, but the
_fulness_ is in the head alone—a fulness of course not absolute,
since circumscribed by a human organism, but a fulness to the
limits of the organism. Essential deity cannot be ascribed to the
human Christ, except as in common with the race created in the
image of God. Life is one, and all life is divine.”... Gloria
Patri, 88, 23—“Every incarnation of life is _pro tanto_ and in its
measure an incarnation of God ... and God’s way is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ.... The _Homoousios_ of the
Nicene Creed was a great victory of the truth. But the Nicene
Fathers builded better than they knew. The Unitarian Dr. Hedge
praised them because they got at the truth, the logical conclusion
of which was to come so long after, that God and man are of one
substance.” So Momerie, Inspiration, holds man’s nature to be the
same in kind with God’s. See criticism of this view in Watts, New
Apologetic, 133, 134. _Homoiousios_ he regards as involving
_homoousios_; the divine nature capable of fission or
segmentation, broken off in portions, and distributed among finite
moral agents; the divine nature undergoing perpetual curtailment;
every man therefore to some extent inspired, and evil as truly an
inspiration of God as is good. Watts seems to us to lack the
proper conception of the infinite as the ground of the finite, and
so not excluding it.

Lyman Abbott affirms that Christ is, “not God _and_ man, but God
_in_ man.” Christ differs from other men only as the flower
differs from the bulb. As the true man, he is genuinely divine.
Deity and humanity are not two distinct natures, but one nature.
The ethico-spiritual nature which is finite in man is identical
with the nature which is infinite in God. Christ’s distinction
from other men is therefore in the degree in which he shared this
nature and possessed a unique fulness of life—“_anointed with the
Holy Spirit and with power_” (_Acts 10:38_). Phillips Brooks: “To
this humanity of man as a part of God—to this I cling; for I do
love it, and I will know nothing else.... Man is, in virtue of his
essential humanity, partaker of the life of the essential Word....
Into every soul, just so far as it is possible for that soul to
receive it, God beats his life and gives his help.” Phillips
Brooks believes in the redemptive indwelling of God in man, so
that salvation is of man, for man, and by man. He does not scruple
to say to every man: “You are a part of God.”

While we shrink from the expressions which seem to imply a
partition of the divine nature, we are compelled to recognize a
truth which these writers are laboring to express, the truth
namely of the essential oneness of all life, and of God in Christ
as the source and giver of it. “Jesus quotes approvingly the words
of _Psalm 82:6_—‘_I said, Ye are Gods._’ Microscopic, indeed, but
divine are we—sparks from the flame of deity. God is the Creator,
but it is through Christ as the mediating and as the final Cause.
‘_And we through him_’ (_1 Cor. 8:6_)—we exist for him, for the
realization of a divine humanity in solidarity with him. Christ is
at once the end and the instrumental cause of the whole process.”
Samuel Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, speaks of “the
essentially human in God, and the essentially divine in man.” The
Son, or Word of God, “when manifested in the forms of a finite
personality, is the essential Christ, revealing that in God which
is essentially and eternally human.”

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:196—“The whole of humanity is the
object of the divine love; it is an Immanuel and son of God; its
whole history is a continual incarnation of God; as indeed it is
said in Scripture that we are a divine offspring, and that we live
and move and have our being in God. But what lies potentially in
the human consciousness of God is not on that account also
manifestly revealed to it from the beginning.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 175-180, on Stoic monism and Platonic dualism, tells us
that the Stoics believed in a personal λόγος and an impersonal
ὕλη, both of them modes of a single substance. Some regarded God
as a mode of matter, _natura naturata_: “Jupiter est quodcunque
vides, quodcunque moveris” (Lucan, Phars., 9:579); others
conceived of him as the _natura naturans_,—this became the
governing conception.... The products are all divine, but not
equally divine.... Nearest of all to the pure essence of God is
the human soul: it is an emanation or outflow from him, a sapling
which is separate from and yet continues the life of the parent
tree, a colony in which some members of the parent state have
settled. Plato followed Anaxagoras in holding that mind is
separate from matter and acts upon it. God is outside the world.
He shapes it as a carpenter shapes wood. On the general subject of
the union of deity and humanity in the person of Christ, see
Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Christologie; Barrows, in Bib. Sac.,
10:765; 26:83; also, Bib. Sac., 17:535; John Owen, Person of
Christ, in Works, 1:223; Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book v. chap.
51-56: Boyce, in Bap. Quar., 1870:385; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:403
sq.; Hovey, God with Us, 61-88; Plumptre, Christ and Christendom,
appendix; E. H. Johnson, The Idea of Law in Christology, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1889:599-625.

Section III.—The Two States Of Christ.

I. The State of Humiliation.

1. The nature of this humiliation.

We may dismiss, as unworthy of serious notice, the views that it consisted
essentially either in the union of the Logos with human nature,—for this
union with human nature continues in the state of exaltation; or in the
outward trials and privations of Christ’s human life,—for this view casts
reproach upon poverty, and ignores the power of the soul to rise superior
to its outward circumstances.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 224—“The error of supposing it
too humiliating to obey law was derived from the Roman treasury of
merit and works of supererogation. Better was Frederick the
Great’s sentiment when his sturdy subject and neighbor, the
miller, whose windmill he had attempted to remove, having beaten
him in a lawsuit, the thwarted monarch exclaimed: ‘Thank God,
there is law in Prussia!’ ” Palmer, Theological Definition,
79—“God reveals himself in the rock, vegetable, animal, man. Must
not the process go on? Must there not appear in the fulness of
time a man who will reveal God as perfectly as is possible in
human conditions—a man who is God under the limitations of
humanity? Such incarnation is humiliation only in the eyes of men.
To Christ it is lifting up, exaltation, glory; _John 12:32_—‘_And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
myself._’ ” George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409—“The divinity of
Christ is not obscured, but is more clearly seen, shining through
his humanity.”

We may devote more attention to the

A. Theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby, that the humiliation
consisted in the surrender of the relative divine attributes.

This theory holds that the Logos, although retaining his divine
self-consciousness and his immanent attributes of holiness, love, and
truth, surrendered his relative attributes of omniscience, omnipotence,
and omnipresence, in order to take to himself veritable human nature.
According to this view, there are, indeed, two natures in Christ, but
neither of these natures is infinite. Thomasius and Delitzsch are the
chief advocates of this theory in Germany. Dr. Howard Crosby has
maintained a similar view in America.

The theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby has been, though
improperly, called the theory of the Kenosis (from
ἐκένωσεν—“_emptied himself_”—in _Phil. 2:7_), and its advocates
are often called Kenotic theologians. There is a Kenosis of the
Logos, but it is of a different sort from that which this theory
supposes. For statements of this theory, see Thomasius, Christi
Person und Werk, 2:233-255, 542-550; Delitzsch, Biblische
Psychologie, 323-333; Howard Crosby, in Bap. Quar., 1870:350-363—a
discourse subsequently published in a separate volume, with the
title: The True Humanity of Christ, and reviewed by Shedd, in
Presb. Rev., April, 1881:429-431. Crosby emphasizes the word
“_became_,” in _John 1:14_—“_and the Word became flesh_”—and gives
the Word “_flesh_” the sense of “man,” or “human.” Crosby, then,
should logically deny, though he does not deny, that Christ’s body
was derived from the Virgin.

We object to this view that:

(_a_) It contradicts the Scriptures already referred to, in which Christ
asserts his divine knowledge and power. Divinity, it is said, can give up
its world-functions, for it existed without these before creation. But to
give up divine attributes is to give up the substance of Godhead. Nor is
it a sufficient reply to say that only the relative attributes are given
up, while the immanent attributes, which chiefly characterize the Godhead,
are retained; for the immanent necessarily involve the relative, as the
greater involve the less.

Liebner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:349-356—“Is the Logos here? But
wherein does he show his presence, that it may be known?” Hase,
Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 217, note. John Caird, Fund. Ideas
of Christianity, 2:125-146, criticises the theory of the Kenosis,
but grants that, with all its self-contradictions, as he regards
them, it is an attempt to render conceivable the profound truth of
a sympathizing, self-sacrificing God.

(_b_) Since the Logos, in uniting himself to a human soul, reduces himself
to the condition and limitations of a human soul, the theory is virtually
a theory of the coëxistence of two human souls in Christ. But the union of
two finite souls is more difficult to explain than the union of a finite
and an infinite,—since there can be in the former case no intelligent
guidance and control of the human element by the divine.

Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The impossibility of
making two finite souls into one finally drove Arianism to the
denial of any human soul in Christ” (Apollinarianism). This
statement of Dorner, which we have already quoted in our account
of Apollinarianism, illustrates the similar impossibility, upon
the theory of Thomasius, of constructing out of two finite souls
the person of Christ. See also Hovey, God with Us, 68.

(_c_) This theory fails to secure its end, that of making comprehensible
the human development of Jesus,—for even though divested of the relative
attributes of Godhood, the Logos still retains his divine
self-consciousness, together with his immanent attributes of holiness,
love, and truth. This is as difficult to reconcile with a purely natural
human development as the possession of the relative divine attributes
would be. The theory logically leads to a further denial of the possession
of any divine attributes, or of any divine consciousness at all, on the
part of Christ, and merges itself in the view of Gess and Beecher, that
the Godhead of the Logos is actually transformed into a human soul.

Kahnis, Dogmatik 3:343—“The old theology conceived of Christ as in
full and unbroken use of the divine self-consciousness, the divine
attributes, and the divine world-functions, from the conception
until death. Though Jesus, as fœtus, child, boy, was not almighty
and omnipresent according to his human nature, yet he was so, as
to his divine nature, which constituted one _ego_ with his human.
Thomasius, however, declared that the Logos gave up his relative
attributes, during his sojourn in flesh. Dorner’s objection to
this, on the ground of the divine unchangeableness, overshoots the
mark, because it makes any _becoming_ impossible.

“But some things in Thomasius’ doctrine are still difficult: 1st,
divinity can certainly give up its world-functions, for it has
existed without these before the world was. In the nature of an
absolute personality, however, lies an absolute knowing, willing,
feeling, which it cannot give up. Hence _Phil. 2:6-11_ speaks of a
giving-up of divine glory, but not of a giving-up of divine
attributes or nature. 2d, little is gained by such an assumption
of the giving-up of _relative_ attributes, since the Logos, even
while divested of a part of his attributes, still has full
possession of his divine self-consciousness, which must make a
purely human development no less difficult. 3d, the expressions of
divine self-consciousness, the works of divine power, the words of
divine wisdom, prove that Jesus was in possession of his divine
self-consciousness and attributes.

“The essential thing which the Kenotics aim at, however, stands
fast; namely, that the divine personality of the Logos divested
itself of its glory (_John 17:5_), riches (_2 Cor. 8:6_), divine
form (_Phil. 2:6_). This divesting is the becoming man. The
humiliation, then, was a giving up of the use, not of the
possession, of the divine nature and attributes. That man can thus
give up self-consciousness and powers, we see every day in sleep.
But man does not, thereby, cease to be man. So we maintain that
the Logos, when he became man, did not divest himself of his
divine person and nature, which was impossible; but only divested
himself of the use and exercise of these—these being latent to
him—in order to unfold themselves to use in the measure to which
his human nature developed itself—a use which found its completion
in the condition of exaltation.” This statement of Kahnis,
although approaching correctness, is still neither quite correct
nor quite complete.

B. Theory that the humiliation consisted in the surrender of the
independent exercise of the divine attributes.

This theory, which we regard as the most satisfactory of all, may be more
fully set forth as follows. The humiliation, as the Scriptures seem to
show, consisted:

(_a_) In that act of the preëxistent Logos by which he gave up his divine
glory with the Father, in order to take a servant-form. In this act, he
resigned not the possession, nor yet entirely the use, but rather the
independent exercise, of the divine attributes.

_John 17:5_—“_glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Phil. 2:6,
7_—“_who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men_”;
_2 Cor. 8:9_—“_For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that
ye through his poverty might become rich._” Pompilia, in Robert
Browning’s The Ring and the Book: “Now I see how God is likest God
in being born.”

Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the
infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity.
Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in
the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point
that is next to absolute extinction. Jesus washing his disciples’
feet, in _John 13:1-20_, is the symbol of his coming down from his
throne of glory and taking the form of a servant, in order that he
may purify us, by regeneration and sanctification, for the
marriage-supper of the Lamb.

(_b_) In the submission of the Logos to the control of the Holy Spirit and
the limitations of his Messianic mission, in his communication of the
divine fulness of the human nature which he had taken into union with
himself.

_Acts 1:2_—Jesus, “_after that he had given commandment through
the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power_”; _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto
God._” A minor may have a great estate left to him, yet may have
only such use of it as his guardian permits. In Homer’s Iliad,
when Andromache brings her infant son to part with Hector, the boy
is terrified by the warlike plumes of his father’s helmet, and
Hector puts them off to embrace him. So God lays aside “That
glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze
of majesty.” Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
Friends, 282, 283—“Revelation is the voluntary approximation of
the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.”

(_c_) In the continuous surrender, on the part of the God-man, so far as
his human nature was concerned, of the exercise of those divine powers
with which it was endowed by virtue of its union with the divine, and in
the voluntary acceptance, which followed upon this, of temptation,
suffering, and death.

_Mat. 26:53_—“_thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and
he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?_”
_John 10:17, 18_—“_Therefore doth the Father love me, because I
lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it again_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even
unto death, yea, the death of the cross._” _Cf._ Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice: “Such music is there in immortal souls, That
while this muddy vesture of decay Doth close it in, we cannot see
it.”

Each of these elements of the doctrine has its own Scriptural support. We
must therefore regard the humiliation of Christ, not as consisting in a
single act, but as involving a continuous self-renunciation, which began
with the Kenosis of the Logos in becoming man, and which culminated in the
self-subjection of the God-man to the death of the cross.

Our doctrine of Christ’s humiliation will be better understood if
we put it midway between two pairs of erroneous views, making it
the third of five. The list would be as follows: (1) Gess: The
Logos gave up all divine attributes; (2) Thomasius: The Logos gave
up relative attributes only; (3) True View: The Logos gave up the
independent exercise of divine attributes; (4) Old Orthodoxy:
Christ gave up the use of divine attributes; (5) Anselm: Christ
acted as if he did not possess divine attributes. The full
exposition of the classical passage with reference to the
humiliation, namely, _Phil. 2:5-8_, we give below, under the next
paragraph, pages 705, 706. Brentius illustrated Christ’s
humiliation by the king who travels incognito. But Mason, Faith of
the Gospel, 158, says well that “to part in appearance with only
the fruition of the divine attributes would be to impose upon us
with a pretence of self-sacrifice; but to part with it in reality
was to manifest most perfectly the true nature of God.”

This same objection lies against the explanation given in the
Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1891:1-30, on Our Lord’s Knowledge
as Man: “If divine knowledge exists in a different form from
human, and a translation into a different form is necessary before
it can be available in the human sphere, our Lord might know the
day of judgment as God, and yet be ignorant of it as man. This
must have been the case if he did not choose to translate it into
the human form. But it might also have been incapable of
translation. The processes of divine knowledge may be far above
our finite comprehension.” This seems to us to be a virtual denial
of the unity of Christ’s person, and to make our Lord play fast
and loose with the truth. He either knew, or he did not know; and
his denial that he knew makes it impossible that he should have
known in any sense.

2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation.

We may distinguish: (_a_) That act of the preïncarnate Logos by which, in
becoming man, he gave up the independent exercise of the divine
attributes. (_b_) His submission to the common laws which regulate the
origin of souls from a preëxisting sinful stock, in taking his human
nature from the Virgin,—a human nature which only the miraculous
conception rendered pure. (_c_) His subjection to the limitations involved
in a human growth and development,—reaching the consciousness of his
sonship at his twelfth year, and working no miracles till after the
baptism. (_d_) The subordination of himself, in state, knowledge,
teaching, and acts, to the control of the Holy Spirit,—so living, not
independently, but as a servant. (_e_) His subjection, as connected with a
sinful race, to temptation and suffering, and finally to the death which
constituted the penalty of the law.

Peter Lombard asked whether God could know more than he was aware
of? It is only another way of putting the question whether, during
the earthly life of Christ, the Logos existed outside of the flesh
of Jesus. We must answer in the affirmative. Otherwise the number
of the persons in the Trinity would be variable, and the universe
could do without him who is ever “_upholding all things by the
word of his power_” (_Heb. 1:3_), and in whom “_all things
consist_” (_Col. 1:17_). Let us recall the nature of God’s
omnipresence (see pages 279-282). Omnipresence is nothing less
than the presence of the whole of God in every place. From this it
follows, that the whole Christ can be present in every believer as
fully as if that believer were the only one to receive of his
fulness, and that the whole Logos can be united to and be present
in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills and
governs the universe. By virtue of this omnipresence, therefore,
the whole Logos can suffer on earth, while yet the whole Logos
reigns in heaven. The Logos outside of Christ has the perpetual
consciousness of his Godhead, while yet the Logos, as united to
humanity in Christ, is subject to ignorance, weakness, and death.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:153—“Jehovah, though present in the form of
the burning bush, was at the same time omnipresent also”;
2:265-284, esp. 282—“Because the sun is shining in and through a
cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be
shining through the remainder of universal space, unobstructed by
any vapor whatever.” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 21—“Not with
God, as with finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate
withdrawal from another.” John Calvin: “The whole Christ was
there; but not all that was in Christ was there.” See Adamson, The
Mind of Christ.

How the independent exercise of the attributes of omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence can be surrendered, even for a time,
would be inconceivable, if we were regarding the Logos as he is in
himself, seated upon the throne of the universe. The matter is
somewhat easier when we remember that it was not the Logos _per
se_, but rather the God-man, Jesus Christ, in whom the Logos
submitted to this humiliation. South, Sermons, 2:9—“Be the
fountain never so full, yet if it communicate itself by a little
pipe, the stream can be but small and inconsiderable, and equal to
the measure of its conveyance.” Sartorius, Person and Work of
Christ, 39—“The human eye, when open, sees heaven and earth; but
when shut, it sees little or nothing. Yet its inherent capacity
does not change. So divinity does not change its nature, when it
drops the curtain of humanity before the eyes of the God-man.”

The divine in Christ, during most of his earthly life, is latent,
or only now and then present to his consciousness or manifested to
others. Illustrate from second childhood, where the mind itself
exists, but is not capable of use; or from first childhood, where
even a Newton or a Humboldt, if brought back to earth and made to
occupy an infant body and brain, would develop as an infant, with
infantile powers. There is more in memory than we can at this
moment recall,—memory is greater than recollection. There is more
of us at all times than we know,—only the sudden emergency reveals
the largeness of our resources of mind and heart and will. The new
nature, in the regenerate, is greater than it appears: “_Beloved,
now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what
we shall be. We, know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be
like him_” (_1 John 3:2_). So in Christ there was an ocean-like
fulness of resource, of which only now and then the Spirit
permitted the consciousness and the exercise.

Without denying (with Dorner) the completeness, even from the
moment of the conception, of the union between the deity and the
humanity, we may still say with Kahnis: “The human nature of
Christ, according to the measure of its development, appropriates
more and more to its conscious use the latent fulness of the
divine nature.” So we take the middle ground between two opposite
extremes. On the one hand, the Kenosis was not the extinction of
the Logos. Nor, on the other hand, did Christ hunger and sleep by
miracle,—this is Docetism. We must not minimize Christ’s
humiliation, for this was his glory. There was no limit to his
descent, except that arising from his sinlessness. His humiliation
was not merely the giving-up of the appearance of Godhead. Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 585—“Should any one aim to celebrate the
condescension of the emperor Charles the Fifth, by dwelling on the
fact that he laid aside the robes of royalty and assumed the style
of a subject, and altogether ignore the more important matter that
he actually became a private person, it would be very weak and
absurd.” _Cf._ _2 Cor. 8:9_—“_though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor_” = he beggared himself. _Mat. 27:46_—“_My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” = non-exercise of divine
omniscience.

Inasmuch, however, as the passage _Phil. 2:6-8_ is the chief basis
and support of the doctrine of Christ’s humiliation, we here
subjoin a more detailed examination of it.

EXPOSITION OF PHILIPPIANS, 2:6-8. The passage reads: “_who,
existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross_.”

The subject of the sentence is at first (_verses 6, 7_) Christ
Jesus, regarded as the preëxistent Logos; subsequently (_verse
8_), this same Christ Jesus, regarded as incarnate. This change in
the subject is indicated by the contrast between μορφῇ θεοῦ
(_verse 6_) and μορφὴν δούλου (_verse 7_), as well as by the
participles λαβών and γενόμενος (_verse 7_) and εύρεθείς (_verse
8_) It is asserted, then, that the preëxisting Logos, “although
subsisting in the form of God, did not regard his equality with
God as a thing to be forcibly retained, but emptied himself by
taking the form of a servant, (that is,) by being made in the
likeness of men. And being found in outward condition as a man, he
(the incarnate son of God, yet further) humbled himself, by
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (_verse
8_).

Here notice that what the Logos divested himself of, in becoming
man, is not the substance of his Godhead, but the “_form of God_”
in which this substance was manifested. This “_form of God_” can
be only that independent exercise of the powers and prerogatives
of Deity which constitutes his “_equality with God_.” This he
surrenders, in the act of “_taking the form of a servant_”—or
becoming subordinate, as man. (Here other Scriptures complete the
view, by their representations of the controlling influence of the
Holy Spirit in the earthly life of Christ.) The phrases “made in
the likeness of men” and “found in fashion as a man” are used to
intimate, not that Jesus Christ was not really man, but that he
was God as well as man, and therefore free from the sin which
clings to man (_cf._ _Rom. 8:3_—ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς
ἁμαρτίας—Meyer). Finally, this one person, now God and man united,
submits himself, consciously and voluntarily, to the humiliation
of an ignominious death.

See Lightfoot, on _Phil. 2:8_—“Christ divested himself, not of his
divine nature, for that was impossible, but of the glories and
prerogatives of Deity. This he did by taking the form of a
servant.” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:287—“Two stages in Christ’s
humiliation, each represented by a finite verb defining the
central act of the particular stage, accompanied by two modal
participles. 1st stage indicated in _v. 7_. Its central act is:
‘_he emptied himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_taking the
form of servant_’; (2) ‘_being made in the likeness of men_.’ Here
we have the humiliation of the Kenosis,—that by which Christ
_became_ man. 2d stage, indicated in _v. 8_. Its central act is:
‘_he humbled himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_being found
in fashion as a man_’; (2) ‘_becoming obedient unto death, yea,
the death of the cross_.’ Here we have the humiliation of his
obedience and death,—that by which, _in_ humanity, he became a
sacrifice for our sins.”

Meyer refers _Eph. 5:31_ exclusively to Christ and the church,
making the completed union future, however, _i. e._, at the time
of the Parousia. “_For this cause shall a man leave his father and
mother_” = “in the incarnation, Christ leaves father and mother
(his seat at the right hand of God), and cleaves to his wife (the
church), and then the two (the descended Christ and the church)
become one flesh (one ethical person, as the married pair become
one by physical union). The Fathers, however, (Jerome, Theodoret,
Chrysostom), referred it to the incarnation.” On the
interpretation of _Phil 2:6-11_, see Comm. of Neander, Meyer,
Lange, Ellicott.

On the question whether Christ would have become man had there
been no sin, theologians are divided. Dorner, Martensen, and
Westcott answer in the affirmative; Robinson, Watts, and Denney in
the negative. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:236;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 327-329; Westcott, Com. on
Hebrews, page 8—“The Incarnation is in its essence independent of
the Fall, though conditioned by it as to its circumstances.” _Per
contra_, see Robinson, Christ. Theol., 219, note—“It would be
difficult to show that a like method of argument from _a priori_
premisses will not equally avail to prove sin to have been a
necessary part of the scheme of creation.” Denney, Studies in
Theology, 101, objects to the doctrine of necessary incarnation
irrespective of sin, that it tends to obliterate the distinction
between nature and grace, to blur the definite outlines of the
redemption wrought by Christ, as the supreme revelation of God and
his love. See also Watts, New Apologetic, 198-202; Julius Müller,
Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 66-126; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-526,
543-548; Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 340-345. On the general
subject of the Kenosis of the Logos, see Bruce, Humiliation of
Christ; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 4:138-150, 386-475; Pope, Person of Christ, 23;
Bodemeyer, Lehre von der Kenosis; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:610-625.

II. The State of Exaltation.

1. The nature of this exaltation.

It consisted essentially in: (_a_) A resumption, on the part of the Logos,
of his independent exercise of divine attributes. (_b_) The withdrawal, on
the part of the Logos, of all limitations in his communication of the
divine fulness to the human nature of Christ. (_c_) The corresponding
exercise, on the part of the human nature, of those powers which belonged
to it by virtue of its union with the divine.

The eighth Psalm, with its account of the glory of human nature,
is at present fulfilled only in Christ (see _Heb. 2:9_—“_but we
behold ... Jesus_”). _Heb. 2:7_—ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽
ἀγγέλους—may be translated, as in the margin of the Rev. Vers.:
“_Thou madest __ him for a little while lower than the angels._”
Christ’s human body was not necessarily subject to death; only by
outward compulsion or voluntary surrender could he die. Hence
resurrection was a natural necessity (_Acts 2:24_—“_whom God
raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not
possible he should be holden of it_”; _31_—“_neither was he left
unto Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption_”). This exaltation,
which then affected humanity only in its head, is to be the
experience also of the members. Our bodies also are to be
delivered from the bondage of corruption, and we are to sit with
Christ upon his throne.

2. The stages of Christ’s exaltation.

(a) The quickening and resurrection.

Both Lutherans and Romanists distinguish between these two, making the
former precede, and the latter follow, Christ’s “preaching to the spirits
in prison.” These views rest upon a misinterpretation of 1 Pet. 3:18-20.
Lutherans teach that Christ descended into hell, to proclaim his triumph
to evil spirits. But this is to give ἐκήρυξεν the unusual sense of
proclaiming his triumph, instead of his gospel. Romanists teach that
Christ entered the underworld to preach to Old Testament saints, that they
might be saved. But the passage speaks only of the disobedient; it cannot
be pressed into the support of a sacramental theory of the salvation of
Old Testament believers. The passage does not assert the descent of Christ
into the world of spirits, but only a work of the preïncarnate Logos in
offering salvation, through Noah, to the world then about to perish.

Augustine, Ad Euodiam, ep. 99—“The spirits shut up in prison are
the unbelievers who lived in the time of Noah, whose spirits or
souls were shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison;
Christ preached to them, not in the flesh, for he was not yet
incarnate, but in the spirit, that is, in his divine nature.”
Calvin taught that Christ descended into the underworld and
suffered the pains of the lost. But not all Calvinists hold with
him here; see Princeton Essays, 1:153. Meyer, on _Rom. 10:7_,
regards the question—“_Who shall descend into the abyss?_ (_that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead_)”—as an allusion to, and so
indirectly a proof-text for, Christ’s descent into the underworld.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 211, favors a preaching to the dead:
“During that time [the three days] he did not return to heaven and
his Father.” But though _John 20:17_ is referred to for proof, is
not this statement true only of his body? So far as the soul is
concerned, Christ can say: “_Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit_,” and “_To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise_” (_Luke
23:43, 46_).

Zahn and Dorner best represent the Lutheran view. Zahn, in
Expositor, March, 1898: 216-223—“If Jesus was truly man, then his
soul, after it left the body, entered into the fellowship of
departed spirits.... If Jesus is he who lives forevermore and even
his dying was his act, this carrying in the realm of the dead
cannot be thought of as a purely passive condition, but must have
been known to those who dwelt there..... If Jesus was the Redeemer
of mankind, the generations of those who had passed away must have
thus been brought into personal relation to him, his work and his
kingdom, without waiting for the last day.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:662 (Syst. Doct., 4:127), thinks
“Christ’s descent into Hades marks a new era of his pneumatic
life, in which he shows himself free from the limitations of time
and space.” He rejects “Luther’s notion of a merely triumphal
progress and proclamation of Christ. Before Christ,” he says,
“there was no abode peopled by the damned. The descent was an
application of the benefit of the atonement (implied in
κηρύσσειν). The work was prophetic, not high-priestly nor kingly.
Going to the spirits in prison is spoken of as a spontaneous act,
not one of physical necessity. No power of Hades led him over into
Hades. Deliverance from the limitations of a mortal body is
already an indication of a higher stage of existence. Christ’s
soul is bodiless for a time—πνεῦμα only—as the departed were.

“The ceasing of this preaching is neither recorded, nor reasonably
to be supposed,—indeed the ancient church supposed it carried on
through the apostles. It expresses the universal significance of
Christ for former generations and for the entire kingdom of the
dead. No physical power is a limit to him. The gates of hell, or
Hades, shall not prevail over or against him. The intermediate
state is one of blessedness for him, and he can admit the penitent
thief into it. Even those who were not laid hold of by Christ’s
historic manifestation in this earthly life still must, and may,
be brought into relation with him, in order to be able to accept
or to reject him. And thus the universal relation of Christ to
humanity and the absoluteness of the Christian religion are
confirmed.” So Dorner, for substance.

All this _versus_ Strauss, who thought that the dying of vast
masses of men, before and after Christ, who had not been brought
into relation to Christ, proves that the Christian religion is not
necessary to salvation, because not universal. For advocacy of
Christ’s preaching to the dead, see also Jahrbuch für d. Theol.,
23:177-228; W. W. Patton, in N. Eng., July, 1882:460-478; John
Miller, Problems Suggested by the Bible, part 1:93-98; part 2:38;
Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison; Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., Apl.
1888; Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten.

For the opposite view, see “No Preaching to the Dead,” in
Princeton Rev., March, 1875:197; 1878:451-491; Hovey, in Bap.
Quar., 4:486 _sq._, and Bib. Eschatology, 97-107; Love, Christ’s
Preaching to the Spirits in Prison; Cowles, in Bib. Sac.,
1875:401; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:616-622; Salmond, in Popular
Commentary; and Johnstone, Com., in loco. So Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and Bishop Pearson. See also E. D. Morris, Is There
Salvation after Death? and Wright, Relation of Death to Probation,
22:28—“If Christ preached to spirits in Hades, it may have been to
demonstrate the _hopelessness_ of adding in the other world to the
privileges enjoyed in this. We do not read that it had any
favorable effect upon the hearers. If men will not hear Moses and
the Prophets, then they will not hear one risen from the dead.
‘_Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise_’ (_Luke 23:43_) was not
comforting, if Christ was going that day to the realm of lost
spirits. The antediluvians, however, were specially favored with
Noah’s preaching, and were specially wicked.”

For full statement of the view presented in the text, that the
preaching referred to was the preaching of Christ as preëxisting
Logos to the spirits, now in prison, when once they were
disobedient in the days of Noah, see Bartlett, in New Englander,
Oct. 1872: 601 sq., and in Bib. Sac., Apr. 1883:333-373. Before
giving the substance of Bartlett’s exposition, we transcribe in
full the passage in question, _1 Pet. 3:18-20_—“_Because Christ
also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous,
that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached
unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when
the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah._”

Bartlett expounds as follows: “ ‘_In which_ [πνεύματι, divine
nature] ‘_he went and preached to the spirits in prison when once
they disobeyed._’ ἀπειθήσασιν is circumstantial aorist, indicating
the time of the preaching as a definite past: It is an anarthrous
dative, as in _Luke 8:27_; _Mat. 8:23_; _Acts 15:25_; _22:17_. It
is an appositive, or predicative, participle. [That the aorist
participle does not necessarily describe an action preliminary to
that of the principal verb appears from its use in _verse 18_
(θανατωθείς), in _1 Thess. 1:6_ (δεξάμενοι), and in _Col. 2:11,
13_.] The connection of thought is: Peter exhorts his readers to
endure suffering bravely, because Christ did so,—in his lower
nature being put to death, in his higher nature enduring the
opposition of sinners before the flood. Sinners of that time only
are mentioned, because this permits an introduction of the
subsequent reference to baptism. _Cf._ _Gen. 6:3_; _1 Pet. 1:10,
11_; _2 Pet. 2:4, 5_.”

(_b_) The ascension and sitting at the right hand of God.

As the resurrection proclaimed Christ to men as the perfected and
glorified man, the conqueror of sin and lord of death, the ascension
proclaimed him to the universe as the reinstated God, the possessor of
universal dominion, the omnipresent object of worship and hearer of
prayer. _Dextra Dei ubique est._

_Mat. 28:18, 20_—“_All authority hath been given unto me in heaven
and on earth.... lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of
the world_”; _Mark 16:19_—“_So then the Lord Jesus, after he had
spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the
right hand of God_”; _Acts 7:55_—“_But he, being full of the Holy
Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of
God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God_”; _2 Cor.
13:4_—“_he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth through
the power of God_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_he put all things in
subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things
to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth
all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same also that
ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all
things._” Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:184-189—“Before the
resurrection, Christ was the God-_man_; since the resurrection, he
is the _God_-man.... He ate with his disciples, not to show the
_quality_, but the _reality_, of his human body.” Nicoll, Life of
Christ: “It was hard for Elijah to ascend”—it required chariot and
horses of fire—“but it was easier for Christ to ascend than to
descend,”—there was a gravitation upwards. Maclaren: “He has not
left the world, though he has ascended to the Father, any more
than he left the Father when he came into the world”; _John
1:18_—“_the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of man, who is in heaven._”

We are compelled here to consider the problem of the relation of
the humanity to the Logos in the state of exaltation. The
Lutherans maintain the ubiquity of Christ’s human body, and they
make it the basis of their doctrine of the sacraments. Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:674-676 (Syst. Doct., 4:138-142), holds to “a
presence, not simply of the Logos, but of the whole God-man, with
all his people, but not necessarily likewise a similar presence in
the world; in other words, his presence is morally conditioned by
men’s receptivity.” The old theologians said that Christ is not in
heaven, quasi carcere. Calvin, Institutes, 2:15—he is “incarnate,
but not incarcerated.” He has gone into heaven, the place of
spirits, and he manifests himself there; but he has also gone far
above all heavens, that he may fill all things. He is with his
people alway. All power is given into his hand. The church is the
fulness of him that filleth all in all. So the Acts of the
Apostles speak constantly of the Son of man, of the man Jesus as
God, ever present, the object of worship, seated at the right hand
of God, having all the powers and prerogatives of Deity. See
Westcott, Bible Com., on _John 20:22_—“_he breathed on them, and
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit_”—“The characteristic
effect of the Paschal gift was shown in the new faith by which the
disciples were gathered into a living society; the characteristic
effect of the Pentecostal gift was shown in the exercise of
supremacy potentially universal.”

Who and what is this Christ who is present with his people when
they pray? It is not enough to say, He is simply the Holy Spirit;
for the Holy Spirit is the “_Spirit of Christ_” (_Rom. 8:9_), and
in having the Holy Spirit we have Christ himself (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him_ [the Comforter] _unto you_”; _14:18_—“_I come unto
you_”). The Christ, who is thus present with us when we pray, is
not simply the Logos, or the divine nature of Christ,—his humanity
being separated from the divinity and being localized in heaven.
This would be inconsistent with his promise, “_Lo, I am with
you_,” in which the “I” that spoke was not simply Deity, but Deity
and humanity inseparably united; and it would deny the real and
indissoluble union of the two natures. The elder brother and
sympathizing Savior who is with us when we pray is man, as well as
God. This manhood is therefore ubiquitous by virtue of its union
with the Godhead.

But this is not to say that Christ’s human _body_ is everywhere
present. It would seem that body must exist in spatial relations,
and be confined to place. We do not know that this is so with
regard to soul. Heaven would seem to be a place, because Christ’s
body is there; and a spiritual body is not a body which is spirit,
but a body which is suited to the uses of the spirit. But even
though Christ may manifest himself, in a glorified human body,
only in heaven, his human soul, by virtue of its union with the
divine nature, can at the same moment be with all his scattered
people over the whole earth. As, in the days of his flesh, his
humanity was confined to place, while as to his Deity he could
speak of the Son of man who is in heaven, so now, although his
human body may be confined to place, his human soul is ubiquitous.
Humanity can exist without body; for during the three days in the
sepulchre, Christ’s body was on earth, but his soul was in the
other world; and in like manner there is, during the intermediate
state, a separation of the soul and the body of believers. But
humanity cannot exist without soul; and if the human Savior is
with us, then his humanity, at least so far as respects its
immaterial part, must be everywhere present. _Per contra_, see
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:326, 327. Since Christ’s human nature has
derivatively become possessed of divine attributes, there is no
validity in the notion of a progressiveness in that nature, now
that it has ascended to the right hand of God. See Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 4:131; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 558, 576.

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:327—“Suppose the presence of the divine
nature of Christ in the soul of a believer in London. This divine
nature is at the same moment conjoined with, and present to, and
modified by, the human nature of Christ, which is in heaven and
not in London.” So Hooker, Eccl. Pol., 54, 55, and E. G. Robinson:
“Christ is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding
for us, while he is present in the church by his Spirit. We pray
to the theanthropic Jesus. Possession of a human body does not now
constitute a limitation. We know little of the nature of the
present body.” We add to this last excellent remark the expression
of our own conviction that the modern conception of the merely
relative nature of space, and the idealistic view of matter as
only the expression of mind and will, have relieved this subject
of many of its former difficulties. If Christ is omnipresent and
if his body is simply the manifestation of his soul, then every
soul may feel the presence of his humanity even now and “_every
eye_” may “_see him_” at his second coming, even though believers
may be separated as far as is Boston from Pekin. The body from
which his glory flashes forth may be visible in ten thousand
places at the same time; (_Mat. 28:20_; _Rev. 1:7_).

Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.

The Scriptures represent Christ’s offices as three in number,—prophetic,
priestly, and kingly. Although these terms are derived from concrete human
relations, they express perfectly distinct ideas. The prophet, the priest,
and the king, of the Old Testament, were detached but designed
prefigurations of him who should combine all these various activities in
himself, and should furnish the ideal reality, of which they were the
imperfect symbols.

_1 Cor. 1:30_—“_of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto
us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and
redemption._” Here “_wisdom_” seems to indicate the prophetic,
“_righteousness_” (or “_justification_”) the priestly, and
“_sanctification and redemption_” the kingly work of Christ.
Denovan: “Three offices are necessary. Christ must be a prophet,
to save us from the ignorance of sin; a priest, to save us from
its guilt; a king, to save us from its dominion in our flesh. Our
faith cannot have firm basis in any one of these alone, any more
than a stool can stand on less than three legs.” See Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 583-586; Archer Butler, Sermons, 1:314.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 235—“For ‘office,’ there are two
words in Latin: _munus_ = position (of Mediator), and _officia_ =
functions (of Prophet, Priest, and King). They are not separate
offices, as are those of President, Chief-Justice, and Senator.
They are not separate functions, capable of successive and
isolated performance. They are rather like the several functions
of the one living human body—lungs, heart, brain—functionally
distinct, yet interdependent, and together constituting one life.
So the functions of Prophet, Priest, and King mutually imply one
another: Christ is always a prophetical Priest, and a priestly
Prophet; and he is always a royal Priest, and a priestly King; and
together they accomplish one redemption, to which all are equally
essential. Christ is both μεσίτης and παράκλητος.”

I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.

1. The nature of Christ’s prophetic work.

(_a_) Here we must avoid the narrow interpretation which would make the
prophet a mere foreteller of future events. He was rather an inspired
interpreter or revealer of the divine will, a medium of communication
between God and men (προφήτης = not foreteller, but forteller, or
forth-teller. _Cf._ Gen. 20:7,—of Abraham; Ps. 105:15,—of the patriarchs;
Mat. 11:9,—of John the Baptist; 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 2:20, and 3:5,—of N. T.
expounders of Scripture).

_Gen. 20:7_—“_restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet_”—spoken
of Abraham; _Ps. 105:15_—“_Touch not mine anointed ones, And do my
prophets no harm_”—spoken of the patriarchs; _Mat. 11:9_—“_But
wherefore went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say into you, and
much more than a prophet_”—spoken of John the Baptist, from whom
we have no recorded predictions, and whose pointing to Jesus as
the “_Lamb of God_” (_John 1:29_) was apparently but an echo of
_Isaiah 53_. _1 Cor. 12:28_—“_first apostles, secondly prophets_”;
_Eph. 2:20_—“_built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets_”; _3:5_—“_revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets
in the Spirit_”—all these latter texts speaking of New Testament
expounders of Scripture.

Any organ of divine revelation, or medium of divine communication,
is a prophet. “Hence,” says Philippi, “the books of Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called ‘_prophetæ priores_,’ or ‘the
earlier prophets.’ Bernard’s _Respice, Aspice, Prospice_ describes
the work of the prophet: for the prophet might see and might
disclose things in the past, things in the present, or things in
the future. Daniel was a prophet, in telling Nebuchadnezzar what
his dream had been, as well as in telling its interpretation
(_Dan. 2:28, 36_). The woman of Samaria rightly called Christ a
prophet, when he told her all things that ever she did (_John
4:29_).” On the work of the prophet, see Stanley, Jewish Church,
1:491.

(_b_) The prophet commonly united three methods of fulfilling his
office,—those of teaching, predicting, and miracle-working. In all these
respects, Jesus Christ did the work of a prophet (Deut 18:15; _cf._ Acts
3:22; Mat. 13:57; Luke 13:33; John 6:14). He taught (Mat. 5-7), he uttered
predictions (Mat. 24 and 25), he wrought miracles (Mat. 8 and 9), while in
his person, his life, his work, and his death, he revealed the Father
(John 8:26; 14:9; 17:8).

_Deut. 18:15_—“_Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet,
from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him
shall ye hearken_”; _cf._ _Acts 3:22_—where this prophecy is said
to be fulfilled in Christ. Jesus calls himself a prophet in _Mat.
13:57_—“_A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country,
and in his own house_”; _Luke 13:33_—“_Nevertheless I must go on
my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following: for it cannot
be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem._” He was called a
prophet: _John 6:14_—“_When therefore the people saw the sign
which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that
cometh into the world._” _John 8:26_—“_the things which I heard
from him_ [the Father], _these speak I unto the world_”;
_14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father_”; _17:8_—“_the
words which thou gavest me I have given unto them._”

Denovan: “Christ teaches us by his word, his Spirit, his example.”
Christ’s miracles were mainly miracles of healing. “Only sickness
is contagious with us. But Christ was an example of perfect
health, and his health was contagious. By its overflow, he healed
others. Only a ‘_touch_’ (_Mat. 9:21_) was necessary.”

Edwin P. Parker, on Horace Bushnell: “The two fundamental elements
of prophecy are insight and expression. Christian prophecy implies
insight or discernment of spiritual things by divine illumination,
and expression of them, by inspiration, in terms of Christian
truth or in the tones and cadences of Christian testimony. We may
define it, then, as the publication, under the impulse of
inspiration, and for edification, of truths perceived by divine
illumination, apprehended by faith, and assimilated by
experience.... It requires a natural basis and rational
preparation in the human mind, a suitable stock of natural gifts
on which to graft the spiritual gift for support and nourishment.
These gifts have had devout culture. They have been crowned by
illuminations and inspirations. Because insight gives foresight,
the prophet will be a seer of things as they are unfolding and
becoming; will discern far-signalings and intimations of
Providence; will forerun men to prepare the way for them, and them
for the way of God’s coming kingdom.”

2. The stages of Christ’s prophetic work.

These are four, namely:

(_a_) The preparatory work of the Logos, in enlightening mankind before
the time of Christ’s advent in the flesh.—All preliminary religious
knowledge, whether within or without the bounds of the chosen people, is
from Christ, the revealer of God.

Christ’s prophetic work began before he came in the flesh. _John
1:9_—“_There was the true light, even the light which lighteth
every man, coming into the world_”—all the natural light of
conscience, science, philosophy, art, civilization, is the light
of Christ. Tennyson: “Our little systems have their day, They have
their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And
thou, O Lord, art more than they.” _Heb. 12:25, 26_—“_See that ye
refuse not him that speaketh.... whose voice then_ [at Sinai]
_shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more
will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven_”;
_Luke 11:49_—“_Therefore said the wisdom of God, I will send unto
them prophets and apostles_”; _cf._ _Mat 23:34_—“_behold, I send
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall
ye kill and crucify_”—which shows that Jesus was referring to his
own teachings, as well as to those of the earlier prophets.

(_b_) The earthly ministry of Christ incarnate.—In his earthly ministry,
Christ showed himself the prophet _par excellence_. While he submitted,
like the Old Testament prophets, to the direction of the Holy Spirit,
unlike them, he found the sources of all knowledge and power within
himself. The word of God did not _come_ to him,—he was _himself_ the Word.

_Luke 6:19_—“_And all the multitude sought to touch him; for power
came forth from him, and healed them all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This
beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested his glory_”; _8:38, 58_—“_I speak the things which I
have seen with my Father.... Before Abraham was born, I am_”;
_cf._ _Jer. 2:1_—“_the word of Jehovah came to me_”; _John
1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word._” _Mat. 26:53_—“_twelve
legions of angels_”; _John 10:18_—of his life: “_I have power to
lay it down, and I have power to take it again_”; _34_—“_Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods,
unto whom the word of God came ... say ye of him, whom the Father
sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I
said, I am the Son of God?_” Martensen, Dogmatics, 295-301, says
of Jesus’ teaching that “its source was not inspiration, but
incarnation.” Jesus was not inspired,—he was the Inspirer.
Therefore he is the true “Master of those who know.” His disciples
act in his name; he acts in his own name.

(_c_) The guidance and teaching of his church on earth, since his
ascension.—Christ’s prophetic activity is continued through the preaching
of his apostles and ministers, and by the enlightening influences of his
Holy Spirit (John 16:12-14; Acts 1:1). The apostles unfolded the germs of
doctrine put into their hands by Christ. The church is, in a derivative
sense, a prophetic institution, established to teach the world by its
preaching and its ordinances. But Christians are prophets, only as being
proclaimers of Christ’s teaching (Num. 11:29; Joel 2:28).

_John 16:12-14_—“_I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he shall guide you into all the truth.... He shall glorify
me: for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you_”;
_Acts 1:1_—“_The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning
all that Jesus began both to do and to teach_”—Christ’s prophetic
work was only _begun_, during his earthly ministry; it is
continued since his ascension. The inspiration of the apostles,
the illumination of all preachers and Christians to understand and
to unfold the meaning of the word they wrote, the conviction of
sinners, and the sanctification of believers,—all these are parts
of Christ’s prophetic work, performed through the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of their union with Christ and participation in Christ’s
Spirit, all Christians are made in a secondary sense prophets, as
well as priests and kings. _Num. 11:29_—“_Would that all Jehovah’s
people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon
them_”; _Joel 2:28_—“_I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy._” All modern
prophecy that is true, however, is but the republication of
Christ’s message—the proclamation and expounding of truth already
revealed in Scripture. “All so-called new prophecy, from Montanus
to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting
miracles.”

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 242—“Every human prophet
presupposes an infinite eternal divine Prophet from whom his
knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain
from which it flows.... As the telescope of highest power takes
into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so Christ the
prophet sometimes gives the intensest insight into the glowing
centre of the heavenly world to those whom this world regards as
unlearned and foolish, and the church recognizes as only babes in
Christ.”

(_d_) Christ’s final revelation of the Father to his saints in glory (John
16:25; 17:24, 26; _cf._ Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 13:12).—Thus Christ’s prophetic
work will be an endless one, as the Father whom he reveals is infinite.

_John 16:25_—“_the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto
you in dark sayings, but shall tell you plainly of the Father_”;
_17:24_—“_I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me_”; _26_—“_I
made known unto them thy name, and will make it known._” The
revelation of his own glory will be the revelation of the Father,
in the Son. _Is. 64:4_—“_For from of old men have not heard, nor
perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God besides
thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him_”; _1 Cor.
13:12_—“_now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was
fully known._” _Rev. 21:23_—“_And the city hath no need of the
sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God
did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb_”—not light, but
lamp. Light is something generally diffused; one sees _by_ it, but
one cannot see _it_. Lamp is the narrowing down, the
concentrating, the focusing of light, so that the light becomes
definite and visible. So in heaven Christ will be the visible God.
We shall never see the Father separate from Christ. No man or
angel has at any time seen God, “_whom no man hath seen, nor can
see._” “_The only begotten Son ... he hath declared him,_” and he
will forever declare him (_John 1:18_; _1 Tim. 6:16_).

The ministers of the gospel in modern times, so far as they are
joined to Christ and possessed by his spirit, have a right to call
themselves prophets. The prophet is one—1. sent by God and
conscious of his mission; 2. with a message from God which he is
under compulsion to deliver; 3. a message grounded in the truth of
the past, setting it in new lights for the present, and making new
applications of it for the future. The word of the Lord must come
to him; it must be his gospel; there must be things new as well as
old. All mathematics are in the simplest axiom; but it needs
divine illumination to discover them. All truth was in Jesus’
words, nay, in the first prophecy uttered after the Fall, but only
the apostles brought it out. The prophet’s message must be 4. a
message for the place and time—primarily for contemporaries and
present needs; 5. a message of eternal significance and worldwide
influence. As the prophet’s word was for the whole world, so our
word may be for other worlds, that _“__unto the principalities and
the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the
church the manifold wisdom of God__”__ (Eph. 3:10)_. It must be
also 6. a message of the kingdom and triumph of Christ, which puts
over against the distractions and calamities of the present time
the glowing ideal and the perfect consummation to which God is
leading his people: “_Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his
place_”; “_Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep
silence before him_” (_Ez. 3:12; Hab. 2:20_). On the whole subject
of Christ’s prophetic office, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,
2:24-27; Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 320-330; Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:366-370.

II. The Priestly Office of Christ.

The priest was a person divinely appointed to transact with God on man’s
behalf. He fulfilled his office, first by offering sacrifice, and secondly
by making intercession. In both these respects Christ is priest.

_Hebrews 7:24-28_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his
priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the
uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest
became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and
made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like these
high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and
then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all,
when he offered up himself. For the law appointeth men high
priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was
after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore._” The
whole race was shut out from God by its sin. But God chose the
Israelites as a priestly nation, Levi as a priestly tribe, Aaron
as a priestly family, the high priest out of this family as type
of the great high priest, Jesus Christ. J. S. Candlish, in Bib.
World, Feb. 1897:87-97, cites the following facts with regard to
our Lord’s sufferings as proofs of the doctrine of atonement: 1.
Christ gave up his life by a perfectly free act; 2. out of regard
to God his Father and obedience to his will; 3. the bitterest
element of his suffering was that he endured it at the hand of
God; 4. this divine appointment and infliction of suffering is
inexplicable, except as Christ endured the divine judgment against
the sin of the race.

1. Christ’s Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the Atonement.

The Scriptures teach that Christ obeyed and suffered in our stead, to
satisfy an immanent demand of the divine holiness, and thus remove an
obstacle in the divine mind to the pardon and restoration of the guilty.
This statement may be expanded and explained in a preliminary way as
follows:—

(_a_) The fundamental attribute of God is holiness, and holiness is not
self-communicating love, but self-affirming righteousness. Holiness limits
and conditions love, for love can will happiness only as happiness results
from or consists with righteousness, that is, with conformity to God.

We have shown in our discussion of the divine attributes (vol. 1,
pages 268-275) that holiness is neither self-love nor love, but
self-affirming purity and right. Those who maintain that love is
self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that
holiness is God’s love for himself, must still admit that this
self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the
standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence. But
we hold that holiness is not identical with, nor a manifestation
of, love. Since self-maintenance must precede self-impartation;
and since benevolence finds its object, motive, standard, and
limit in righteousness, holiness, the self-affirming attribute,
can in no way be resolved into love, the self-communicating. God
must first maintain his own being before he can give to another;
and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive in the
worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,
because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a
standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be
itself love, but must be holiness. To make holiness a form of love
is really to deny its existence, and with this to deny that any
atonement is necessary for man’s salvation.

(_b_) The universe is a reflection of God, and Christ the Logos is its
life. God has constituted the universe, and humanity as a part of it, so
as to express his holiness, positively by connecting happiness with
righteousness, negatively by attaching unhappiness or suffering to sin.

We have seen, in vol. I, pages 109, 309-311, 335-338, that since
Christ is the Logos, the immanent God, God revealed in nature, in
humanity, and in redemption, the universe must be recognized as
created, upheld and governed by the same Being who in the course
of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for
human sin by his death on Calvary. As all God’s creative activity
has been exercised through Christ (vol. I, page 310), so it is
Christ in whom all things consist or are held together (vol. I,
page 311). Providence, as well as preservation, is his work. He
makes the universe to reflect God, and especially God’s ethical
nature. That pain or loss universally and inevitably follow sin is
the proof that God is unalterably opposed to moral evil; and the
demands and reproaches of conscience witness that holiness is the
fundamental attribute of God’s being.

(_c_) Christ the Logos, as the Revealer of God in the universe and in
humanity, must condemn sin by visiting upon it the suffering which is its
penalty; while at the same time, as the Life of humanity, he must endure
the reaction of God’s holiness against sin which constitutes that penalty.

Here is a double work of Christ which Paul distinctly declares in
_Rom. 8:3_—“_For what the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh._” The
meaning is that God did through Christ what the law could not do,
namely, accomplish deliverance for humanity; and did this by
sending his son in a nature which in us is identified with sin. In
connection with sin (περὶ ἁμαρτίας), and as an offering for sin,
God condemned sin, by condemning Christ. Expositor’s Greek
Testament, _in loco_: “When the question is asked, In what sense
did God send his Son ‘in connection with sin’, there is only one
answer possible. He sent him to expiate sin by his sacrificial
death. This is the centre and foundation of Paul’s gospel; see
_Rom. 3:25_ _sq._” But whatever God did in condemning sin he did
through Christ; “_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_); Christ was the condemner, as well as
the condemned; conscience in us, which unites the accuser and the
accused, shows us how Christ could be both the Judge and the
Sin-bearer.

(_d_) Our personality is not self-contained. We live, move, and have our
being naturally in Christ the Logos. Our reason, affection, conscience,
and will are complete only in him. He is generic humanity, of which we are
the offshoots. When his righteousness condemns sin, and his love
voluntarily endures the suffering which is sin’s penalty, humanity
ratifies the judgment of God, makes full propitiation for sin, and
satisfies the demands of holiness.

My personal existence is grounded in God. I cannot perceive the
world outside of me nor recognize the existence of my fellow men,
except as he bridges the gulf between me and the universe.
Complete self-consciousness would be impossible if we did not
partake of the universal Reason. The smallest child makes
assumptions and uses processes of logic which are all instinctive,
but which indicate the working in him of an absolute and infinite
Intelligence. True love is possible only as God’s love flows into
us and takes possession of us; so that the poet can truly say:
“Our loves in higher love endure.” No human will is truly free,
unless God emancipates it; only he whom the Son of God makes free
is free indeed; “_work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to
work_” (_Phil. 2:12, 13_). Our moral nature, even more than our
intellectual nature, witnesses that we are not sufficient to
ourselves, but are complete only in him in whom we live and move
and have our being (_Col. 2:10_; _Acts 17:28_). No man can make a
conscience for himself. There is a common conscience, over and
above the finite and individual conscience. That common conscience
is one in all moral beings. John Watson: “There is no
consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of other selves
and things, and no consciousness of the world apart from the
consciousness of the single Reality presupposed in both.” This
single Reality is Jesus Christ, the manifested God, the Light that
lighteth every man, and the Life of all that lives (_John 1:4,
9_). He can represent humanity before God, because his immanent
Deity constitutes the very essence of humanity.

(_e_) While Christ’s love explains his willingness to endure suffering for
us, only his holiness furnishes the reason for that constitution of the
universe and of human nature which makes this suffering necessary. As
respects us, his sufferings are substitutionary, since his divinity and
his sinlessness enable him to do for us what we could never do for
ourselves. Yet this substitution is also a sharing—not the work of one
external to us, but of one who is the life of humanity, the soul of our
soul and the life of our life, and so responsible with us for the sins of
the race.

Most of the recent treatises on the Atonement have been
descriptions of the effects of the Atonement upon life and
character, but have thrown no light upon the Atonement itself, if
indeed they have not denied its existence. We must not emphasize
the effects by ignoring the cause. Scripture declares the ultimate
aim of the Atonement to be that God “_might himself be just_”
(_Rom. 3:26_); and no theory of the atonement will meet the
demands of reason or conscience that does not ground its necessity
in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love. We acknowledge
that our conceptions of atonement have suffered some change. To
our fathers the atonement was a mere historical fact, a sacrifice
offered in a few brief hours upon the Cross. It was a literal
substitution of Christ’s suffering for ours, the payment of our
debt by another, and upon the ground of that payment we are
permitted to go free. Those sufferings were soon over, and the
hymn, “Love’s Redeeming Work is Done,” expressed the believer’s
joy in a finished redemption. And all this is true. But it is only
a part of the truth. The atonement, like every other doctrine of
Christianity, is a fact of life; and such facts of life cannot be
crowded into our definitions, because they are greater than any
definitions that we can frame. We must add to the idea of
_substitution_ the idea of _sharing_. Christ’s doing and suffering
is not that of one external and foreign to us. He is bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh; the bearer of our humanity; yes, the
very life of the race.

(_f_) The historical work of the incarnate Christ is not itself the
atonement,—it is rather the revelation of the atonement. The suffering of
the incarnate Christ is the manifestation in space and time of the eternal
suffering of God on account of human sin. Yet without the historical work
which was finished on Calvary, the age-long suffering of God could never
have been made comprehensible to men.

The life that Christ lived in Palestine and the death that he
endured on Calvary were the revelation of a union with mankind
which antedated the Fall. Being thus joined to us from the
beginning, he has suffered in all human sin; “_in all our
affliction he has been afflicted_” (_Is. 63:9_); so that the
Psalmist can say: “_Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our
burden, even the God who is our salvation_” (_Ps. 68:19_). The
historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the
diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective
in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take
deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted
but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to
follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the
transgressor. The Cross was the concrete exhibition of the
holiness that required, and of the love that provided, man’s
redemption. Those six hours of pain could never have procured our
salvation if they had not been a revelation of eternal facts in
the being of God. The heart of God and the meaning of all previous
history were then unveiled. The whole evolution of humanity was
there depicted in its essential elements, on the one hand the sin
and condemnation of the race, on the other hand the grace and
suffering of him who was its life and salvation. As he who hung
upon the cross was God, manifest in the flesh, so the suffering of
the cross was God’s suffering for sin, manifest in the flesh. The
imputation of our sins to him is the result of his natural union
with us. He has been our substitute from the beginning. We cannot
quarrel with the doctrine of substitution when we see that this
substitution is but the sharing of our griefs and sorrows by him
whose very life pulsates in our veins. See A. H. Strong, Christ in
Creation, 78-80, 177-180.

(_g_) The historical sacrifice of our Lord is not only the final
revelation of the heart of God, but also the manifestation of the law of
universal life—the law that sin brings suffering to all connected with it,
and that we can overcome sin in ourselves and in the world only by
entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s victory,
or, in other words, only by union with him through faith.

We too are subject to the same law of life. We who enter into
fellowship with our Lord “_fill up ... that which is lacking of
the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake, which is the
church_” (_Col. 1:24_). The Christian Church can reign with Christ
only as it partakes in his suffering. The atonement becomes a
model and stimulus to self-sacrifice, and a test of Christian
character. But it is easy to see how the subjective effect of
Christ’s sacrifice may absorb the attention, to the exclusion of
its ground and cause. The moral influence of the atonement has
taken deep hold upon our minds, and we are in danger of forgetting
that it is the holiness of God, and not the salvation of men, that
primarily requires it. When sharing excludes substitution; when
reconciliation of man to God excludes reconciliation of God to
man; when the only peace secured is peace in the sinner’s heart
and no thought is given to that peace with God which it is the
first object of the atonement to secure; then the whole
evangelical system is weakened, God’s righteousness is ignored,
and man is practically put in place of God. We must not go back to
the old mechanical and arbitrary conceptions of the atonement,—we
must go forward to a more vital apprehension of the relation of
the race to Christ. A larger knowledge of Christ, the life of
humanity, will enable us to hold fast the objective nature of the
atonement, and its necessity as grounded in the holiness of God;
while at the same time we appropriate all that is good in the
modern view of the atonement, as the final demonstration of God’s
constraining love which moves men to repentance and submission.
See A. H. Strong, Cleveland Address, 1904:16-18; Dinsmore, The
Atonement in Literature and in Life, 213-250.

A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.

We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to
moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.

(_a_) MORAL.—The atonement is described as

A _provision originating in God’s love_, and manifesting this love to the
universe; but also as an _example of disinterested love_, to secure our
deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ’s death is
referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.

_A provision_: _John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son_”; _Rom. 5:8_—“_God commendeth his own
love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us_”; _1 John 4:9_—“_Herein was the love of God manifested in
us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that
we might live through him_”; _Heb. 2:9_—“_Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace
of God he should taste of death for every man_”—redemption
originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the
Son.—_An example_: _Luke 9:22-24_—“_The Son of man must suffer ...
and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take
up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake, the same shall save it_”; _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he
died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto
themselves_”; _Gal. 1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins, that he
might deliver us out of this present __ evil world_”; _Eph.
5:25-27_—“_Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for
it; that he might sanctify it_”; _Col. 1:22_—“_reconciled in the
body of his flesh through death, to present you holy_”; _Titus
2:14_—“_gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify_”; _1 Pet. 2:21-24_—“_Christ also suffered
for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps:
who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon
the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious
cottager, on hearing the text, ‘_God so loved the world_,’
exclaimed: ‘Ah, that _was_ love! I could have given myself, but I
could never have given my son.’ ” There was a wounding of the
Father through the heart of the Son: “_they shall look unto me
whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one
mourneth for his only son_” (_Zech. 12:10_).

(b) COMMERCIAL.—The atonement is described as

A _ransom_, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these
passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In
these passages, Christ’s death is represented as the price of our
deliverance from sin and death.

_Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45_—“_to give his life a ransom for
many_”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν. _1 Tim. 2:6_—“_who gave himself a
ransom for all_”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“_for_,” in the sense of
“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“_for_,” in the sense
of “in behalf of,” “for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition
of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable
in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. See _Mat.
2:22_—“_Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of_ [ἀντί]
_his father Herod_”; _Luke 11:11_—“_shall his son ask ... a fish,
and he for_ [ἀντί] _a fish give him a serpent?_” _Heb.
12:2_—“_Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for_
[ἀντί = as the price of] _the joy that was set before him endured
the cross_”; _16_—“_Esau, who for_ [ἀντί = in exchange for] _one
mess of meat sold his own birthright._” See also _Mat.
16:26_—“_what shall a man give in exchange for_ (ἀντάλλαγμα) _his
life_” = how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it?
Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in _1 Tim.
2:6_ requires that ὑπέρ should mean “instead of.” We should
interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_. “Something befell
Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall
sinners” (E. Y. Mullins).

Meyer, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom for many_”—“The
ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the
shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”
See also _1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23_—“_ye were bought with a price_”; and
_2 Pet. 2:1_—“_denying even the Master that bought them._” The
word “redemption,” indeed, means simply “repurchase,” or “the
state of being repurchased”—_i. e._, delivered by the payment of a
price. _Rev. 5:9_—“_thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God
with thy blood men of every tribe._” Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In
Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.” Buttmann, N. T. Grammar,
321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of,
for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.” See Grimm’s Wilke,
Lexicon Græco-Lat.: “ἀντί, _in vicem_, _anstatt_”; Thayer, Lexicon
N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received,
endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase) _Mat. 20:28_”;
also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.

Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever
really uttered the words “_give his life a ransom for many_”
(_Mat. 20:28_). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the
result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a
means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism,
377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel,
but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate
the apostolic conception of Jesus’ teaching, a conception which
Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his
apostles and should guide them into all the truth (_John 14:26_;
_16:13_). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline
doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.

(_c_) LEGAL.—The atonement is described as

An act of _obedience_ to the law which sinners had violated; a _penalty_,
borne in order to rescue the guilty; and an _exhibition_ of God’s
righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon
and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is
represented as demanded by God’s law and government.

_Obedience_: _Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law,
that he might redeem them that were under the law_”; _Mat.
3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness_”—Christ’s
baptism prefigured his death, and was a consecration to death;
_cf._ _Mark 10:38_—“_Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or
to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?_” _Luke
12:50_—“_I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!_” _Mat. 26:39_—“_My Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not
as I will, but as thou wilt_”; _5:17_—“_Think not that I came to
destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to
fulfil_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_becoming obedient even unto death_”; _Rom.
5:19_—“_through the obedience of the one shall the many be made
righteous_”; _10:4_—“_Christ is the end of the law unto
righteousness to every one that believeth._”—_Penalty_: _Rom.
4:25_—“_who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised
for our justification_”; _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on
our behalf_”—here “_sin_”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer); _Gal.
1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins_”; _3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us
from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is
written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree_”; _cf._ _Deut
21:23_—“_he that is hanged is accursed of God._” _Heb.
9:28_—“_Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of
many_”; _cf._ _Lev. 5:17_—“_if any one sin ... yet is he guilty,
and shall bear his iniquity_”; _Num. 14:34_—“_for every day a
year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years_”; _Lam.
5:7_—“_Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their
iniquities._”—_Exhibition_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth
to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his
righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done
aforetime, in the forbearance of God_”; _cf._ _Heb. 9:15_—“_a
death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first covenant._”

On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die
Ritschl’sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes
Ritschl’s evasion of their natural force and declares Paul’s
teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the
law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law
against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L.
L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New
Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation
on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn
from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews
made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the
reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor
Paine’s view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.
“_God was in Christ_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_) and God “_manifested in the
flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_) are the keynote of Paul’s teaching, and
this is identical with John’s doctrine of the Logos: “_the Word
was God_,” and “_the Word became flesh_” (_John 1:1, 14_)

The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states
three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential
kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness,
in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine
immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical
unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any
more than the presence of man’s spirit in all he thinks and does
proves that man’s spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3.
God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than
all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this
indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and
filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the
first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which
contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as
the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man
instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead
of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders
impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus
Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of
God’s feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within
the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity
of Christ and no objective atonement.

(d) SACRIFICIAL.—The atonement is described as

A work of _priestly mediation_, which reconciles God to men,—notice here
that the term “reconciliation” has its usual sense of removing enmity, not
from the offending, but from the offended party;—a _sin-offering_,
presented on behalf of transgressors;—a _propitiation_, which satisfies
the demands of violated holiness;—and a _substitution_, of Christ’s
obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show
that Christ’s death is demanded by God’s attribute of justice, or
holiness, if sinners are to be saved.

_Priestly mediation_: _Heb. 9:11, 12_—“_Christ having come a high
priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but
through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption_”; _Rom. 5:10_—“_while
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of
his Son_”; _2 Cor. 5:18, 19_—“_all things are of God, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their
trespasses_”; _Eph. 2:16_—“_might reconcile them both in one body
unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby_”;
_cf._ _12, 13, 19_—“_strangers from the covenants of the
promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye
are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God_”; _Col. 1:20_—“_through him to reconcile all things unto
himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross._”

On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the
apostle to be, that “we were ‘_enemies_,’ not actively, as hostile
to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.” The
epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against
Gentile and Jew alike (_Rom. 1:18_). “_While we were enemies_”
(_Rom. 5:10_)—“when God was hostile to us.” “Reconciliation” is
therefore the removal of God’s wrath toward man. Meyer, on this
last passage, says that Christ’s death does not remove man’s wrath
toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy
Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself.
See Denney, Com. on _Rom. 5:9-11_, in Expositor’s Gk. Test.

_Cf._ _Num. 25:13_, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to
have “_made atonement for the children of Israel_.” Surely, the
“_atonement_” here cannot be a reconciliation of _Israel_. The
action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,
_1 Sam. 29:4_—“_wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself
unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?_”
_Mat. 5:23, 24_—“_If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against
thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first
be reconciled to thy brother_ [_i. e._, remove his enmity, not
thine own], _and then come and offer thy gift._” See Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:387-398.

Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (_Rom.
5:10_) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part,
but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.” Paul
was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it
from Christ himself (_Gal. 1:12_). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The
idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false
conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be
unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it
was before.” The old hymn expressed the truth: “My God is
reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child;
I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And
‘Father, Abba, Father’ cry.”

_A sin-offering_: _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the world_”—here αἴρων means to take away
by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion
to the sin-offering of _Isaiah 53:6-12_—“_when thou shalt make his
soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the
slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all._”
_Mat. 26:28_—“_this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many unto remission of sins_”; _cf._ _Ps. 50:5_—“_made a
covenant with me by sacrifice._” _1 John 1:7_—“_the blood of Jesus
his Son cleanseth us from all sin_”—not sanctification, but
justification; _1 Cor. 5:7_—“_our passover also hath been
sacrificed, even Christ_”; _cf._ _Deut. 16:2-6_—“_thou shalt
sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God._” _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave
himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor
of a sweet smell_” (see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek
Testament); _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _22,
26_—“_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now
once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself_”; _1 Pet. 1:18, 19_—“_redeemed
... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot, even the blood of Christ._” See Expos. Gk. Test., on _Eph.
1:7_.

Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out that _John
6:52-59_—“_eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood_”—is Christ’s
reference to his death in terms of _sacrifice_. So, as we shall
see below, it is a _propitiation_ (_1 John 2:2_). We therefore
strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement,
64—“Christ’s death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning
instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which
springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of
substitution or expiation.” Wilson forgets that this necessity of
suffering arises from God’s righteousness; that without this
suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on
account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that
this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved
thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnation _constituted_ the
Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated.
Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:
“Incarnation in order to Atonement.” We regard as still better the
words: “Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”

_A propitiation_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth to be a
propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just,
and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus._” A full and
critical exposition of this passage will be found under the
Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is
sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ’s death is a
propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon
God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands the
atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction
of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s justifying
the believer.

Compare _Luke 18:13_, marg.—“_God, be thou merciful unto me the
sinner_”; lit.: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”—by the
sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even
while he prayed. _Heb. 2:17_—“_a merciful and faithful high priest
in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of
the people_”; _1 John 2:2_—“_and he is the propitiation for our
sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world_”;
_4:10_—“_Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins_”; _cf._
_Gen. 32:20_, LXX.—“_I will appease_ [ἐξιλάσομαι, “propitiate”]
_him with the present that goeth before me_”; _Prov. 16:14_,
LXX.—“_The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise
man will pacify it_” [ἐξιλάσεται, “propitiate it”].

On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology,
216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to
pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the
sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the
infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be
inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In
fact, it was he himself who ‘_set forth_’ Jesus as ‘_a
propitiation_’ (_Rom. 3:25, 26_).” Paul never merges the objective
atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New
Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With
him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for
Christ _in_ us by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75,
89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul’s representation of Christ
as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as
prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The priest says: Man’s
return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man’s
sin. This is Paul’s doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a
divine provision for sacrifice. Man’s return to God is the thing
wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect
prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who
comes in to perfect man’s imperfect work. This is the doctrine of
the Epistle to the Hebrews.” This recognition of expiation in
Paul’s teaching, together with denial of its validity and
interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather
than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.

Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still
further and affirms: “In the N. T. God is never said to be
propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God
or satisfies God’s wrath.” Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T.
God is represented as self-propitiated: “Christianity is
distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his
own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of
his own love.” This self-propitiation however must not be thought
of as a bearing of penalty: “Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a
sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled
with purification—‘_with his stripes we are healed_’ (_Is. 53:5_).
And in the N. T., ‘_the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the
world_’ (_John 1:29_); ‘_the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth_’ (_1
John 1:7_).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the
penalty, but removal of the sin.” This seems to us a distinct
contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an
essential of Christian doctrine (see _Rom. 3:25_; _1 John 2:2_),
while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man,
but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on
The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol.,
1900:734-756.

_A substitution_: _Luke 22:37_—“_he was reckoned with
transgressors_”; _cf._ _Lev. 16:21, 22_—“_and Aaron shall lay both
his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them
upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all
their iniquities unto a solitary land_”; _Is. 53:5, 6_—“_he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all._” _John 10:11_—“_the good shepherd layeth down
his life for the sheep_”; _Rom. 5:6-8_—“_while we were yet weak,
in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a
righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some
one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us_”; _1
Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for
the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God._”

To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (_b_) above,
in which Christ’s death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer’s
comment, there quoted, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom
for many,_” λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says: “ἀντί denotes
substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of,
is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration
thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution
in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to
secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is
paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other
parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an
expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is
paid] are redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as
having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain
imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of
their sins were expiated.”

Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that “in both the N. T. texts, _Mat.
16:26_ and _Mark 8:37_, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin
to the conception of atonement: _cf._ _Is. 43:3, 4_; _51:11_;
_Amos 5:12_. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction
and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“_Mat. 20:28_
contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is
not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it,
Christ’s death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a
ransom.”

The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical
Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of
others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer,
Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol.
2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of
vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of
Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution,
but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_
means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he
obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a
non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul
and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We
prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well
as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of
them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in
Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution
must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to
be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its
external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the
conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in
Jesus himself.

Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine
of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal
suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ’s
vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas
not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr.
Clarke’s Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not
import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling
or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may
bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or
approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed,
for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided
that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God,
is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”
Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that “substitution means simply
that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something
which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done
and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free
life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be
preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever
dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his
cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken,
but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and
make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man’s redemption.” On the
Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale,
Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342;
Smeaton, Our Lord’s and the Apostles’ Doctrine of Atonement.

An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in
which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from
moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of
sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon
a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as
found in the Mosaic system.

The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus’
own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ
did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a
gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be
explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not to _speak_ about
it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in
his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to
a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy
Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that
the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles
to the gospels. The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of
Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of
salvation, but for the redeemed. “None of the ransomed ever knew.”
The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.

Harnack: “There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look
upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is
possible.” We regard this confession as a demonstration of the
psychological correctness of Paul’s doctrine of a vicarious
atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it
reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be
appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton
declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience,
which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that
Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in
fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he
forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also
transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only
indications of the higher verdicts of God: _1 John 3:20_—“_if our
heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all
things._” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people
half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be
placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the
sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same
divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements
in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely
out of existence.” So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral
fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must
be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic,
but moral.” Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere
form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a
utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the
creature. A more correct view of God’s righteousness as the
fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the
constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting
suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine
wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a
divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.

B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found in the Mosaic
system.

(_a_) We may dismiss as untenable, on the one hand, the theory that
sacrifice is essentially the presentation of a gift (Hofmann,
Baring-Gould) or a feast (Spencer) to the Deity; and on the other hand the
theory that sacrifice is a symbol of renewed fellowship (Keil), or of the
grateful offering to God of the whole life and being of the worshiper
(Bähr). Neither of these theories can explain the fact that the sacrifice
is a bloody offering, involving the suffering and death of the victim, and
brought, not by the simply grateful, but by the conscience-stricken soul.

For the views of sacrifice here mentioned, see Hofmann,
Schriftbeweis, II, 1:214-294; Baring-Gould, Origin and Devel. of
Relig. Belief, 368-390; Spencer, De Legibus Hebræorum; Keil, Bib.
Archäologie, sec. 43, 47; Bähr, Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus,
2:196, 269; also synopsis of Bähr’s view, in Bib. Sac., Oct.
1870:593; Jan. 1871:171. _Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement,
228-240; Lange, Introd. to Com. on Exodus, 38—“The heathen change
God’s symbols into myths (rationalism), as the Jews change God’s
sacrifices into meritorious service (ritualism).” Westcott,
Hebrews, 281-294, seems to hold with Spencer that sacrifice is
essentially a feast made as an offering to God. So Philo: “God
receives the faithful offerer to his own table, giving him back
part of the sacrifice.” Compare with this the ghosts in Homer’s
Odyssey, who receive strength from drinking the blood of the
sacrifices. Bähr’s view is only half of the truth. Reunion
presupposes Expiation. Lyttleton, in Lux Mundi, 281—“The sinner
must first expiate his sin by suffering,—then only can he give to
God the life thus purified by an expiatory death.” Jahn, Bib.
Archæology, sec. 373, 378—“It is of the very idea of the sacrifice
that the victim shall be presented directly to God, and in the
presentation shall be destroyed.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 253,
speaks of the delicate feeling of the Biblical critic who, with
his mouth full of beef or mutton, professes to be shocked at the
cruelty to animals involved in the temple sacrifices. Lord Bacon:
“Hieroglyphics came before letters, and parables before
arguments.” “The old dispensation was God’s great parable to man.
The Theocracy was graven all over with divine hieroglyphics. Does
there exist the Rosetta stone by which we can read these
hieroglyphics? The shadows, that have been shortening up into
definiteness of outline, pass away and vanish utterly under the
full meridian splendor of the Sun of Righteousness.” On _Eph.
1:7_—“_the blood of Christ,_” as an expiatory sacrifice which
secures our justification, see Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek
Testament.

(_b_) The true import of the sacrifice, as is abundantly evident from both
heathen and Jewish sources, embraced three elements,—first, that of
satisfaction to offended Deity, or propitiation offered to violated
holiness; secondly, that of substitution of suffering and death on the
part of the innocent, for the deserved punishment of the guilty; and,
thirdly, community of life between the offerer and the victim. Combining
these three ideas, we have as the total import of the sacrifice:
Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The
bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin
involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that
without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through
the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his
sin.

Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach,
Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 _sq._—“The essence of punishment is
retribution (Vergeltung), and retribution is a fundamental law of
the world-order. In retribution lies the atoning power of
punishment. This consciousness that the nature of sin demands
retribution, in other words, this certainty that there is in Deity
a righteousness that punishes sin, taken in connection with the
consciousness of personal transgression, awakens the longing for
atonement,”—which is expressed in the sacrifice of a slaughtered
beast. The Greeks recognized representative expiation, not only in
the sacrifice of beasts, but in human sacrifices. See examples in
Tyler, Theol. Gk. Poets, 196, 197, 245-253; see also Virgil,
Æneid, 5:815—“Unum pro multis dabitur caput”; Ovid, Fasti, vi—“Cor
pro corde, precor; pro fibris sumite fibras. Hanc animam vobis pro
meliore damus.”

Stahl, Christliche Philosophie, 146—“Every unperverted conscience
declares the eternal law of righteousness that punishment shall
follow inevitably on sin. In the moral realm, there is another way
of satisfying righteousness—that of atonement. This differs from
punishment in its effect, that is, reconciliation,—the moral
authority asserting itself, not by the destruction of the
offender, but by taking him up into itself and uniting itself to
him. But the offender cannot offer his own sacrifice,—that must be
done by the priest.” In the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus, Hermes
says to Prometheus: “Hope not for an end to such oppression, until
a god appears as thy substitute in torment, ready to descend for
thee into the unillumined realm of Hades and the dark abyss of
Tartarus.” And this is done by Chiron, the wisest and most just of
the Centaurs, the son of Chronos, sacrificing himself for
Prometheus, while Hercules kills the eagle at his breast and so
delivers him from torment. This legend of Æschylus is almost a
prediction of the true Redeemer. See article on Sacrifice, by
Paterson, in Hastings, Bible Dictionary.

Westcott, Hebrews, 282, maintains that the idea of expiatory
offerings, answering to the consciousness of sin, does not belong
to the early religion of Greece. We reply that Homer’s Iliad, in
its first book, describes just such an expiatory offering made to
Phœbus Apollo, so turning away his wrath and causing the plague
that wastes the Greeks to cease. E. G. Robinson held that there is
“no evidence that the Jews had any idea of the efficacy of
sacrifice for the expiation of moral guilt.” But in approaching
either the tabernacle or the temple the altar always presented
itself before the laver. H. Clay Trumbull, S. S. Times, Nov. 30,
1901:801—“The Passover was not a passing by of the houses of
Israelites, but a passing over or crossing over by Jehovah to
enter the homes of those who would welcome him and who had entered
into covenant with him by sacrifice. The Oriental sovereign was
accompanied by his executioner, who entered to smite the
first-born of the house only when there was no covenanting at the
door.” We regard this explanation as substituting an incidental
result and effect of sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. This
always had in it the idea of reparation for wrong-doing by
substitutionary suffering.

Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day, on the Significance
of Sacrifice, 218-237, tells us that he went to Palestine
prepossessed by Robertson Smith’s explanation that sacrifice was a
feast symbolizing friendly communion between man and his God. He
came to the conclusion that the sacrificial meal was not the
primary element, but that there was a substitutionary value in the
offering. Gift and feast are not excluded; but these are sequences
and incidentals. Misfortune is evidence of sin; sin needs to be
expiated; the anger of God needs to be removed. The sacrifice
consisted principally in the shedding of the blood of the victim.
The “bursting forth of the blood” satisfied and bought off the
Deity. George Adam Smith on _Isaiah 53_ (2:364)—“Innocent as he
is, he gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law for the
guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or
miscarriage of human justice: in God’s intent and purpose, but
also by its own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice.
There is no exegete but agrees to this. 353—The substitution of
the servant of Jehovah for the guilty people and the redemptive
force of that substitution are no arbitrary doctrine.”

_Satisfaction_ means simply that there is a principle in God’s
being which not simply refuses sin passively, but also opposes it
actively. The judge, if he be upright, must repel a bribe with
indignation, and the pure woman must flame out in anger against an
infamous proposal. R. W. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some
edge to it,—else it is none.” But the judge and the woman do not
enjoy this repelling,—they suffer rather. So God’s satisfaction is
no gloating over the pain or loss which he is compelled to
inflict. God has a wrath which is calm, judicial, inevitable—the
natural reaction of holiness against unholiness. Christ suffers
both as one with the inflicter and as one with those on whom
punishment is inflicted: “_For Christ also pleased not himself;
but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee
fell on me_” (_Rom. 15:3_; _cf._ _Ps. 69:9_).

(_c_) In considering the exact purport and efficacy of the Mosaic
sacrifices, we must distinguish between their theocratical, and their
spiritual, offices. They were, on the one hand, the appointed means
whereby the offender could be restored to the outward place and
privileges, as member of the theocracy, which he had forfeited by neglect
or transgression; and they accomplished this purpose irrespectively of the
temper and spirit with which they were offered. On the other hand, they
were symbolic of the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, and
obtained forgiveness and acceptance with God only as they were offered in
true penitence, and with faith in God’s method of salvation.

_Heb. 9:13, 14_—“_For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the
ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify
unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve
the living God?_” _10:3, 4_—“_But in those sacrifices there is a
remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that
the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins._” Christ’s
death also, like the O. T. sacrifices, works temporal benefit even
to those who have no faith; see pages 771, 772.

Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 441, 448, answers the
contention of the higher critics that, in the days of Isaiah,
Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, no Levitical code existed; that these
prophets expressed disapproval of the whole sacrificial system, as
a thing of mere human device and destitute of divine sanction. But
the Book of the Covenant surely existed in their day, with its
command: “_An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt
sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings_” (_Ex. 20:24_). Or, if it
is maintained that Isaiah condemned even that early piece of
legislation, it proves too much, for it would make the prophet
also condemn the Sabbath as a piece of will-worship, and even
reject prayer as displeasing to God, since in the same connection
he says: “_new moon and Sabbath ... I cannot away with ... when ye
spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you_” (_Is.
1:13-15_). Isaiah was condemning simply _heartless_ sacrifice;
else we make him condemn all that went on at the temple. _Micah
6:8_—“_what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly?_” This
does not exclude the offering of sacrifice, for Micah anticipates
the time when “_the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be
established on the top of the mountains, ... And many nations
shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of
Jehovah_” (_Micah 4:1, 2_). _Hos. 6:6_—“_I desire goodness, and
not sacrifice,_” is interpreted by what follows, “_and the
knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings_.” Compare _Prov. 8:10;
17:12_; and Samuel’s words: “_to obey is better than sacrifice_”
(_1 Sam. 15:22_). What was the altar from which Isaiah drew his
description of God’s theophany and from which was taken the live
coal that touched his lips and prepared him to be a prophet? (_Is.
6:1-8). Jer. 7:22_—“_I spake not ... concerning burnt-offerings or
sacrifices ... but this thing ... Hearken unto my voice._”
Jeremiah insists only on the worthlessness of sacrifice where
there is no heart.

(_d_) Thus the Old Testament sacrifices, when rightly offered, involved a
consciousness of sin on the part of the worshiper, the bringing of a
victim to atone for the sin, the laying of the hand of the offerer upon
the victim’s head, the confession of sin by the offerer, the slaying of
the beast, the sprinkling or pouring-out of the blood upon the altar, and
the consequent forgiveness of the sin and acceptance of the worshiper. The
sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement symbolized
yet more distinctly the two elementary ideas of sacrifice, namely,
satisfaction and substitution, together with the consequent removal of
guilt from those on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered.

_Lev. 1:4_—“_And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the
burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make
atonement for him_”; _4:20_—“_Thus shall he do with the bullock;
as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do
with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they
shall be forgiven_”; so _31_ and _35_—“_and the priest shall make
atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned, and he
shall be forgiven_”; so _5:10, 16_; _6:7_. _Lev. 17:11_—“_For the
life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon
the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood
that maketh atonement by reason of the life._”

The patriarchal sacrifices were sin-offerings, as the sacrifice of
Job for his friends witnesses: _Job 42:7-9_—“_My wrath is kindled
against thee_ [Eliphaz] _... therefore, take unto you seven
bullocks ... and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering_”; _cf._
_33:24_—“_Then God is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him
from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom_”; _1:5_—Job
offered burnt-offerings for his sons, for he said, “_It may be
that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts_”;
_Gen. 8:20_—Noah “_offered burnt-offerings on the altar_”;
_21_—“_and Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in
his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s
sake._”

That vicarious suffering is intended in all these sacrifices, is
plain from _Lev. 16:1-34_—the account of the sin-offering and the
scape-goat of the great day of atonement, the full meaning of
which we give below; also from _Gen. 22:13_—“_Abraham went and
took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead
of his son_”; _Ex. 32:30-32_—where Moses says: “_Ye have sinned a
great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall
make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and
said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them
gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if
not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast
written._” See also _Deut. 21:1-9_—the expiation of an uncertain
murder, by the sacrifice of a heifer,—where Oehler, O. T.
Theology, 1:389, says: “Evidently the punishment of death incurred
by the manslayer is executed symbolically upon the heifer.” In
_Is. 53:1-12_—“_All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all ... stripes ... offering for sin_”—the ideas of
both satisfaction and substitution are still more plain.

Wallace, Representative Responsibility: “The animals offered in
sacrifice must be animals brought into direct relation to man,
subject to him, his property. They could not be spoils of the
chase. They must bear the mark and impress of humanity. Upon the
sacrifice human hands must be laid—the hands of the offerer and
the hands of the priest. The offering is the substitute of the
offerer. The priest is the substitute of the offerer. The priest
and the sacrifice were _one symbol_. [Hence, in the new
dispensation, the priest and the sacrifice are one—both are found
in Christ.] The high priest must enter the holy of holies with his
own finger dipped in blood: the blood must be in contact with his
own person,—another indication of the identification of the two.
Life is nourished and sustained by life. All life lower than man
may be sacrificed for the good of man. The blood must be spilled
on the ground. ‘_In the blood is the life._’ The life is reserved
by God. It is given _for_ man, but not _to_ him. Life for life is
the law of the creation. So the life of Christ, also, for _our_
life.—Adam was originally priest of the family and of the race.
But he lost his representative character by the one act of
disobedience, and his redemption was that of the individual, not
that of the race. The race ceased to have a representative. The
subjects of the divine government were henceforth to be, not the
natural offspring of Adam as such, but the redeemed. That the body
and the blood are both required, indicates the demand that the
death should be by a violence that sheds blood. The sacrifices
showed forth, not Christ himself [his character, his life], but
Christ’s death.”

This following is a tentative scheme of the JEWISH SACRIFICES. The
general reason for sacrifice is expressed in _Lev. 17:11_ (quoted
above). I. _For the individual_: 1. The sin-offering = sacrifice
to expiate sins of ignorance (thoughtlessness and plausible
temptation): _Lev. 4:14, 20, 31_. 2. The trespass-offering =
sacrifice to expiate sins of omission: _Lev. 5:5, 6_. 3. The
burnt-offering = sacrifice to expiate general sinfulness: _Lev.
1:3_ (the offering of Mary, _Luke 2:24_). II. _For the family_:
The Passover: _Ex. 12:27_. III. _For the people_: 1. The daily
morning and evening sacrifice: _Ex. 29:38-46_. 2. The offering of
the great day of atonement: _Lev. 16:6-10_. In this last, two
victims were employed, one to represent the means—death, and the
other to represent the result—forgiveness. One victim could not
represent both the atonement—by shedding of blood, and the
justification—by putting away sin.

Jesus died for our sins at the Passover feast and at the hour of
daily sacrifice. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Nov. 30,
1901:801—“Shedding of blood and consequent safety were only a part
of the teaching of the Passover. There is a double identification
of the person offering with his sacrifice: first, in that he
offers it as his representative, laying his hand on its head, or
otherwise transferring his personality, as it were, to it; and
secondly, in that, receiving it back again from God to whom he
gave it, he feeds on it, so making it part of his life and
nourishing himself thereby: ‘_My flesh ... which I will give ...
for the life of the world ... he that eateth me, he also shall
live because of me_’ (_John 6:51, 57_).”

Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34—On the great
day of atonement “the double offering—one for Jehovah and the
other for Azazel—typified not only the removing of the guilt of
the people, but its transfer to the odious and detestable being
who was the first cause of its existence,” _i. e._, Satan.
Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 112, 113—“It was not
the punishment which the goat bore away into the wilderness, for
the idea of punishment is not directly associated with the
scapegoat. It bears the sin—the whole unfaithfulness of the
community which had defiled the holy places—out from them, so that
henceforth they may be pure.... The sin-offering—representing the
sinner by receiving the burden of his sin—makes expiation by
yielding up and yielding back its life to God, under conditions
which represent at once the wrath and the placability of God.”

On the Jewish sacrifices, see Fairbairn, Typology, 1:209-223;
Wünsche, Die Leiden des Messias; Jukes, O. T. Sacrifices; Smeaton,
Apostle’s Doctrine of Atonement, 25-53; Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship
of O. T., 120; Bible Com., 1:502-508, and Introd. to Leviticus;
Candlish on Atonement, 123-142; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 161-180.
On passages in Leviticus, see Com. of Knobel, in Exeg. Handb. d.
Alt. Test.

(_e_) It is not essential to this view to maintain that a formal divine
institution of the rite of sacrifice, at man’s expulsion from Eden, can be
proved from Scripture. Like the family and the state, sacrifice may,
without such formal inculcation, possess divine sanction, and be ordained
of God. The well-nigh universal prevalence of sacrifice, however, together
with the fact that its nature, as a bloody offering, seems to preclude
man’s own invention of it, combines with certain Scripture intimations to
favor the view that it was a primitive divine appointment. From the time
of Moses, there can be no question as to its divine authority.

Compare the origin of prayer and worship, for which we find no
formal divine injunctions at the beginnings of history. _Heb.
11:4_—“_By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice
than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was
righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts_”—here it
may be argued that since Abel’s faith was not presumption, it must
have had some injunction and promise of God to base itself upon.
_Gen. 4:3, 4_—“_Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings
of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto
Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had
not respect._”

It has been urged, in corroboration of this view, that the
previous existence of sacrifice is intimated in _Gen. 3:21_—“_And
Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and
clothed them._” Since the killing of animals for food was not
permitted until long afterwards (_Gen. 9:3_—to Noah: “_Every
moving thing that liveth shall be food for you_”), the inference
has been drawn, that the skins with which God clothed our first
parents were the skins of animals slain for sacrifice,—this
clothing furnishing a type of the righteousness of Christ which
secures our restoration to God’s favor, as the death of the
victims furnished a type of the suffering of Christ which secures
for us remission of punishment. We must regard this, however, as a
pleasing and possibly correct hypothesis, rather than as a
demonstrated truth of Scripture. Since the unperverted instincts
of human nature are an expression of God’s will, Abel’s faith may
have consisted in trusting these, rather than the promptings of
selfishness and self-righteousness. The death of animals in
sacrifice, like the death of Christ which it signified, was only
the hastening of what belonged to them because of their connection
with human sin. Faith recognized this connection. On the divine
appointment of sacrifice, see Park, in Bib. Sac., Jan.
1876:102-132. Westcott, Hebrews, 281—“There is no reason to think
that sacrifice was instituted in obedience to a direct
revelation.... It is mentioned in Scripture at first as natural
and known. It was practically universal in prechristian times....
In due time the popular practice of sacrifice was regulated by
revelation as disciplinary, and also used as a vehicle for typical
teaching.” We prefer to say that sacrifice probably originated in
a fundamental instinct of humanity, and was therefore a divine
ordinance as much as were marriage and government.

On _Gen. 4:3, 4_, see C. H. M.—“The entire difference between Cain
and Abel lay, not in their natures, but in their sacrifices. Cain
brought to God the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth. Here was
no recognition of the fact that he was a sinner, condemned to
death. All his toil could not satisfy God’s holiness, or remove
the penalty. But Abel recognized his sin, condemnation,
helplessness, death, and brought the bloody sacrifice—the
sacrifice of another—the sacrifice provided by God, to meet the
claims of God. He found a substitute, and he presented it in
faith—the faith that looks away from self to Christ, or God’s
appointed way of salvation. The difference was not in their
persons, but in their gifts. Of Abel it is said, that God ‘_bore
witness in respect of his gifts_’ (_Heb. 11:4_). To Cain it is
said, ‘_if thou doest well_ (LXX.: ὀρθῶς προσενένκης—_if thou
offerest correctly_) _shalt thou not be accepted?_’ But Cain
desired to get away from God and from God’s way, and to lose
himself in the world. This is ‘_the way of Cain_’ (_Jude 11_).”
_Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement, 259—“Both in Levitical and
patriarchal times, we have no formal institution of sacrifice, but
the regulation of sacrifice already existing. But Abel’s faith may
have had respect, not to a revelation with regard to sacrificial
worship, but with regard to the promised Redeemer; and his
sacrifice may have expressed that faith. If so, God’s acceptance
of it gave a divine warrant to future sacrifices. It was not
will-worship, because it was not substituted for some other
worship which God had previously instituted. It is not necessary
to suppose that God gave an expressed command. Abel may have been
moved by some inward divine monition. Thus Adam said to Eve,
‘_This is now bone of my bones...._’ (_Gen. 2:23_), before any
divine command of marriage. No fruits were presented during the
patriarchal dispensation. Heathen sacrifices were corruptions of
primitive sacrifice.” Von Lasaulx, Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und
Römer, und ihr Verhältniss zu dem einen auf Golgotha, 1—“The first
word of the _original_ man was probably a prayer, the first action
of _fallen_ man a sacrifice”; see translation in Bib. Sac., 1:
368-408. Bishop Butler: “By the general prevalence of propitiatory
sacrifices over the heathen world, the notion of repentance alone
being sufficient to expiate guilt appears to be contrary to the
general sense of mankind.”

(_f_) The New Testament assumes and presupposes the Old Testament doctrine
of sacrifice. The sacrificial language in which its descriptions of
Christ’s work are clothed cannot be explained as an accommodation to
Jewish methods of thought, since this terminology was in large part in
common use among the heathen, and Paul used it more than any other of the
apostles in dealing with the Gentiles. To deny to it its Old Testament
meaning, when used by New Testament writers to describe the work of
Christ, is to deny any proper inspiration both in the Mosaic appointment
of sacrifices and in the apostolic interpretations of them. We must
therefore maintain, as the result of a simple induction of Scripture
facts, that the death of Christ is a vicarious offering, provided by God’s
love for the purpose of satisfying an internal demand of the divine
holiness, and of removing an obstacle in the divine mind to the renewal
and pardon of sinners.

“The epistle of James makes no allusion to sacrifice. But he would
not have failed to allude to it, if he had held the moral view of
the atonement; for it would then have been an obvious help to his
argument against merely formal service. Christ protested against
washing hands and keeping Sabbath days. If sacrifice had been a
piece of human formality, how indignantly would he have inveighed
against it! But instead of this he received from John the Baptist,
without rebuke, the words: ‘_Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh
away the sin of the world_’ (_John 1:29_).”

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 247—“The sacrifices of bulls and
goats were like token-money, as our paper-promises to pay,
accepted at their face-value till the day of settlement. But the
sacrifice of Christ was the gold which absolutely extinguished all
debt by its intrinsic value. Hence, when Christ died, the veil
that separated man from God was rent from the top to the bottom by
supernatural hands. When the real expiation was finished, the
whole symbolical system representing it became _functum officio_,
and was abolished. Soon after this, the temple was razed to the
ground, and the ritual was rendered forever impossible.”

For denial that Christ’s death is to be interpreted by heathen or
Jewish sacrifices, see Maurice on Sac., 154—“The heathen
signification of words, when applied to a Christian use, must be
not merely modified, but inverted”; Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul,
2:479—“The heathen and Jewish sacrifices rather show us what the
sacrifice of Christ was not, than what it was.” Bushnell and Young
do not doubt the expiatory nature of heathen sacrifices. But the
main terms which the N. T. uses to describe Christ’s sacrifice are
borrowed from the Greek sacrificial ritual, _e. g._, θυσία,
προσφορά, ἰλασμός, ἁγιάζω, καθαίρω, ἰλάσκομαι. To deny that these
terms, when applied to Christ, imply expiation and substitution,
is to deny the inspiration of those who used them. See Cave,
Scripture Doctrine of Sacrifice; art. on Sacrifice, in Smith’s
Bible Dictionary.

With all these indications of our dissent from the modern denial
of expiatory sacrifice, we deem it desirable by way of contrast to
present the clearest possible statement of the view from which we
dissent. This may be found in Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,
1:238, 260, 261—“The gradual distinction of the moral from the
ceremonial, the repression and ultimate replacement of ceremonial
expiation by the moral purification of the sense and life, and
consequently the transformation of the mystical conception of
redemption into the corresponding ethical conception of education,
may be designated as the kernel and the teleological principle of
the development of the history of religion.... But to Paul the
question in what sense the death of the Cross could be the means
of the Messianic redemption found its answer simply from the
presuppositions of the Pharisaic theology, which beheld in the
innocent suffering, and especially in the martyr-death, of the
righteous, an expiatory means compensating for the sins of the
whole people. What would be more natural than that Paul should
contemplate the death on the Cross in the same way, as an
expiatory means of salvation for the redemption of the sinful
world?

“We are thus led to see in this theory the symbolical presentment
of the truth that the new man suffers, as it were, vicariously,
for the old man; for he takes upon himself the daily pain of
self-subjugation, and bears guiltlessly in patience the evils
which the old man could not but necessarily impute to himself as
punishment. Therefore as Christ is the exemplification of the
moral idea of man, so his death is the symbol of that moral
process of painful self-subjugation in obedience and patience, in
which the true inner redemption of man consists.... In like manner
Fichte said that the only proper means of salvation is the death
of selfhood, death _with_ Jesus, regeneration.

“The defect in the Kant-Fichtean doctrine of redemption consisted
in this, that it limited the process of ethical transformation to
the individual, and endeavored to explain it from his subjective
reason and freedom alone. How could the individual deliver himself
from his powerlessness and become free? This question was
unsolved. The Christian doctrine of redemption is that the moral
liberation of the individual is not the effect of his own natural
power, but the effect of the divine Spirit, who, from the
beginning of human history, put forth his activity as the power
educating to the good, and especially has created for himself in
the Christian community a permanent organ for the education of the
people and of individuals. It was the moral individualism of Kant
which prevented him from finding in the historically realized
common spirit of the good the real force available for the
individual becoming good.”

C. Theories of the Atonement.

1st. The Socinian, or Example Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that subjective sinfulness is the sole barrier between
man and God. Not God, but only man, needs to be reconciled. The only
method of reconciliation is to better man’s moral condition. This can be
effected by man’s own will, through repentance and reformation. The death
of Christ is but the death of a noble martyr. He redeems us, only as his
human example of faithfulness to truth and duty has a powerful influence
upon our moral improvement. This fact the apostles, either consciously or
unconsciously, clothed in the language of the Greek and Jewish sacrifices.
This theory was fully elaborated by Lælius Socinus and Faustus Socinus of
Poland, in the 16th century. Its modern advocates are found in the
Unitarian body.

The Socinian theory may be found stated, and advocated, in
Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 1:566-600; Martineau, Studies of
Christianity, 83-176; J. F. Clarke, Orthodoxy, Its Truths and
Errors, 235-265; Ellis, Unitarianism and Orthodoxy; Sheldon, Sin
and Redemption, 146-210. The text which at first sight most seems
to favor this view is _1 Pet 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps._” But see
under (_e_) below. When Correggio saw Raphael’s picture of St.
Cecilia, he exclaimed: “I too am a painter.” So Socinus held that
Christ’s example roused our humanity to imitation. He regarded
expiation as heathenish and impossible; every one must receive
according to his deeds; God is ready to grant forgiveness on
simple repentance.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 277—“The theory first insists
on the inviolability of moral sequences in the conduct of every
moral agent; and then insists that, on a given condition, the
consequences of transgression may be arrested by almighty fiat....
Unitarianism errs in giving a transforming power to that which
works beneficently only after the transformation has been
wrought.” In ascribing to human nature a power of
self-reformation, it ignores man’s need of regeneration by the
Holy Spirit. But even this renewing work of the Holy Spirit
presupposes the atoning work of Christ. “_Ye must be born anew_”
(_John 3:7_) necessitates “_Even so must the Son of man be lifted
up_” (_John 3:14_). It is only the Cross that satisfies man’s
instinct of reparation. Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums,
99—“Those who regarded Christ’s death soon ceased to bring any
other bloody offering to God. This is true both in Judaism and in
heathenism. Christ’s death put an end to all bloody offerings in
religious history. The impulse to sacrifice found its satisfaction
in the Cross of Christ.” We regard this as proof that the Cross is
essentially a satisfaction to the divine justice, and not a mere
example of faithfulness to duty. The Socinian theory is the first
of six theories of the Atonement, which roughly correspond with
our six previously treated theories of sin, and this first theory
includes most of the false doctrine which appears in mitigated
forms in several of the theories following.

To this theory we make the following objections:

(_a_) It is based upon false philosophical principles,—as, for example,
that will is merely the faculty of volitions; that the foundation of
virtue is in utility; that law is an expression of arbitrary will; that
penalty is a means of reforming the offender; that righteousness, in
either God or man, is only a manifestation of benevolence.

If the will is simply the faculty of volitions, and not also the
fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end, then
man can, by a single volition, effect his own reformation and
reconciliation to God. If the foundation of virtue is in utility,
then there is nothing in the divine being that prevents pardon,
the good of the creature, and not the demands of God’s holiness,
being the reason for Christ’s suffering. If law is an expression
of arbitrary will, instead of being a transcript of the divine
nature, it may at any time be dispensed with, and the sinner may
be pardoned on mere repentance. If penalty is merely a means of
reforming the offender, then sin does not involve objective guilt,
or obligation to suffer, and sin may be forgiven, at any moment,
to all who forsake it,—indeed, _must_ be forgiven, since
punishment is out of place when the sinner is reformed. If
righteousness is only a form or manifestation of benevolence, then
God can show his benevolence as easily through pardon as through
penalty, and Christ’s death is only intended to attract us toward
the good by the force of a noble example.

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:218-264, is essentially Socinian in
his view of Jesus’ death. Yet he ascribes to Jesus the idea that
suffering is _necessary_, even for one who stands in perfect love
and blessed fellowship with God, since earthly blessedness is not
the true blessedness, and since a true piety is impossible without
renunciation and stooping to minister to others. The earthly
life-sacrifice of the Messiah was his necessary and greatest act,
and was the culminating point of his teaching. Suffering made him
a perfect example, and so ensured the success of his work. But why
God should have made it necessary that the holiest must suffer,
Wendt does not explain. This constitution of things we can
understand only as a revelation of the holiness of God, and of his
punitive relation to human sin. Simon, Reconciliation, 357, shows
well that example might have sufficed for a race that merely
needed leadership. But what the race needed most was energizing,
the fulfilment of the conditions of restoration to God on their
behalf by one of themselves, by one whose very essence they
shared, who created them, in whom they consisted, and whose work
was therefore their work. Christ condemned with the divine
condemnation the thoughts and impulses arising from his
subconscious life. Before the sin, which for the moment seemed to
be his, could become his, he condemned it. He sympathized with,
nay, he revealed, the very justice and sorrow of God. _Hebrews
2:16-18_—“_For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he
giveth help to the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behooved him in
all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become
a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them
that are tempted._”

(_b_) It is a natural outgrowth from the Pelagian view of sin, and
logically necessitates a curtailment or surrender of every other
characteristic doctrine of Christianity—inspiration, sin, the deity of
Christ, justification, regeneration, and eternal retribution.

The Socinian theory requires a surrender of the doctrine of
inspiration; for the idea of vicarious and expiatory sacrifice is
woven into the very warp and woof of the Old and New Testaments.
It requires an abandonment of the Scripture doctrine of sin; for
in it all idea of sin as perversion of nature rendering the sinner
unable to save himself, and as objective guilt demanding
satisfaction to the divine holiness, is denied. It requires us to
give up the deity of Christ; for if sin is a slight evil, and man
can save himself from its penalty and power, then there is no
longer need of either an infinite suffering or an infinite Savior,
and a human Christ is as good as a divine. It requires us to give
up the Scripture doctrine of justification, as God’s act of
declaring the sinner just in the eye of the law, solely on account
of the righteousness and death of Christ to whom he is united by
faith; for the Socinian theory cannot permit the counting to a man
of any other righteousness than his own. It requires a denial of
the doctrine of regeneration; for this is no longer the work of
God, but the work of the sinner; it is no longer a change of the
affections below consciousness, but a self-reforming volition of
the sinner himself. It requires a denial of eternal retribution;
for this is no longer appropriate to finite transgression of
arbitrary law, and to superficial sinning that does not involve
nature.

(_c_) It contradicts the Scripture teachings, that sin involves objective
guilt as well as subjective defilement; that the holiness of God must
punish sin; that the atonement was a bearing of the punishment of sin for
men; and that this vicarious bearing of punishment was necessary, on the
part of God, to make possible the showing of favor to the guilty.

The Scriptures do not make the main object of the atonement to be
man’s subjective moral improvement. It is to God that the
sacrifice is offered, and the object of it is to satisfy the
divine holiness, and to remove from the divine mind an obstacle to
the showing of favor to the guilty. It was something external to
man and his happiness or virtue, that required that Christ should
suffer. What Emerson has said of the martyr is yet more true of
Christ: “Though love repine, and reason chafe, There comes a voice
without reply, ’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for the truth
he ought to die.” The truth for which Christ died was truth
internal to the nature of God; not simply truth externalized and
published among men. What the truth of God required, that Christ
rendered—full satisfaction to violated justice. “Jesus paid it
all”; and no obedience or righteousness of ours can be added to
his work, as a ground of our salvation.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 276—“This theory fails of a
due recognition of that deep-seated, universal and innate sense of
ill-desert, which in all times and everywhere has prompted men to
aim at some expiation of their guilt. For this sense of guilt and
its requirements the moral influence theory makes no adequate
provision, either in Christ or in those whom Christ saves.
Supposing Christ’s redemptive work to consist merely in winning
men to the practice of righteousness, it takes no account of
penalty, either as the sanction of the law, as the reaction of the
divine holiness against sin, or as the upbraiding of the
individual conscience.... The Socinian theory overlooks the fact
that there must be some objective manifestation of God’s wrath and
displeasure against sin.”

(_d_) It furnishes no proper explanation of the sufferings and death of
Christ. The unmartyrlike anguish cannot be accounted for, and the
forsaking by the Father cannot be justified, upon the hypothesis that
Christ died as a mere witness to truth. If Christ’s sufferings were not
propitiatory, they neither furnish us with a perfect example, nor
constitute a manifestation of the love of God.

Compare Jesus’ feeling, in view of death, with that of Paul:
“_having the desire to depart_” (_Phil 1:23_). Jesus was filled
with anguish: “_Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour_” (_John 12:27_). If Christ was
simply a martyr, then he is not a perfect example; for many a
martyr has shown greater courage in prospect of death, and in the
final agony has been able to say that the fire that consumed him
was “a bed of roses.” Gethsemane, with its mental anguish, is
apparently recorded in order to indicate that Christ’s sufferings
even on the cross were not mainly physical sufferings. The Roman
Catholic Church unduly emphasizes the physical side of our Lord’s
passion, but loses sight of its spiritual element. The Christ of
Rome indeed is either a babe or dead, and the crucifix presents to
us not a risen and living Redeemer, but a mangled and lifeless
body.

Stroud, in his Physical Cause of our Lord’s Death, has made it
probable that Jesus died of a broken heart, and that this alone
explains _John 19:34_—“_one of the soldiers with a spear pierced
his side, and straightway there came out blood and water_”—_i.
e._, the heart had already been ruptured by grief. That grief was
grief at the forsaking of the Father (_Mat. 27:46_—“_My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?_”), and the resulting death shows
that that forsaking was no imaginary one. Did God make the holiest
man of all to be the greatest sufferer of all the ages? This heart
broken by the forsaking of the Father means more than martyrdom.
If Christ’s death is not propitiatory, it fills me with terror and
despair; for it presents me not only with a very imperfect example
in Christ, but with a proof of measureless injustice on the part
of God. _Luke 23:28_—“_weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves_”—Jesus rejects all pity that forgets his suffering for
others.

To the above view of Stroud, Westcott objects that blood does not
readily flow from an ordinary corpse. The separation of the red
corpuscles of the blood from the serum, or water, would be the
beginning of decomposition, and would be inconsistent with the
statement in _Acts 2:31_—“_neither did his flesh see corruption._”
But Dr. W. W. Keen of Philadelphia, in his article on The Bloody
Sweat of our Lord (Bib. Sac., July, 1897:469-484) endorses
Stroud’s view as to the physical cause of our Lord’s death.
Christ’s being forsaken by the Father was only the culmination of
that relative withdrawal which constituted the source of Christ’s
loneliness through life. Through life he was a servant of the
Spirit. On the cross the Spirit left him to the weakness of
unassisted humanity, destitute of conscious divine resources.
Compare the curious reading of _Heb. 2:9_—“_that he apart from
God_ (χωρὶς Θεοῦ) _should taste death for every man._”

If Christ merely supposed himself to be deserted by God, “not only
does Christ become an erring man, and, so far as the predicate
deity is applicable to him, an erring God; but, if he cherished
unfounded distrust of God, how can it be possible still to
maintain that his will was in abiding, perfect agreement and
identity with the will of God?” See Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, by
Stählin, 219. Charles C. Everett, Gospel of Paul, says Jesus was
not crucified because he was accursed, but he was accursed because
he was crucified, so that, in wreaking vengeance upon him, Jewish
law abrogated itself. This interpretation however contradicts _2
Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our
behalf_”—where the divine identification of Christ with the race
of sinners antedates and explains his sufferings. _John
1:29_—“_the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world_”—does not refer to Jesus as a lamb for gentleness, but as a
lamb for sacrifice. Maclaren: “How does Christ’s death prove God’s
love? Only on one supposition, namely, that Christ is the
incarnate Son of God, sent by the Father’s love and being his
express image”; and, we may add, suffering vicariously for us and
removing the obstacle in God’s mind to our pardon.

(_e_) The influence of Christ’s example is neither declared in Scripture,
nor found in Christian experience, to be the chief result secured by his
death. Mere example is but a new preaching of the law, which repels and
condemns. The cross has power to lead men to holiness, only as it first
shows a satisfaction made for their sins. Accordingly, most of the
passages which represent Christ as an example also contain references to
his propitiatory work.

There is no virtue in simply setting an example. Christ did
nothing, simply for the sake of example. Even his baptism was the
symbol of his propitiatory death; see pages 761, 762. The
apostle’s exhortation is not “abstain from all _appearance_ of
evil” (_1 Thess. 5:22_, A. Vers.), but “_abstain from every form
of evil_” (Rev. Vers.). Christ’s death is the payment of a real
debt due to God; and the convicted sinner needs first to see the
debt which he owes to the divine justice paid by Christ, before he
can think hopefully of reforming his life. The hymns of the
church: “I lay my sins on Jesus,” and “Not all the blood of
beasts,” represent the view of Christ’s sufferings which
Christians have derived from the Scriptures. When the sinner sees
that the mortgage is cancelled, that the penalty has been borne,
he can devote himself freely to the service of his Redeemer. _Rev.
12:11_—“_they overcame him_ [Satan] _because of the blood of the
Lamb_”—as Christ overcame Satan by his propitiatory sacrifice, so
we overcome by appropriating to ourselves Christ’s atonement and
his Spirit; _cf._ _1 John 5:4_—“_this is the victory that hath
overcome the world, even our faith._” The very text upon which
Socinians most rely, when it is taken in connection with the
context, proves their theory to be a misrepresentation of
Scripture, _1 Pet. 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you, leaving
you an example, that ye should follow his steps_”—is succeeded by
_verse 24_—“_who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed_”—the latter words
being a direct quotation from Isaiah’s description of the
substitutionary sufferings of the Messiah (_Is. 53:5_).

When a deeply convicted sinner was told that God could cleanse his
heart and make him over anew, he replied with righteous
impatience: “That is not what I want,—I have a debt to pay first!”
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 28, 89—“Nowhere in
tabernacle or temple shall we ever find the laver placed before
the altar. The altar is Calvary, and the laver is Pentecost,—one
stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying
Spirit.... So the oil which symbolised the sanctifying Spirit was
always put ‘_upon the blood of the trespass-offering_’ (_Lev.
14:17_).” The extremity of Christ’s suffering on the Cross was
coincident with the extremest manifestation of the guilt of the
race. The greatness of this he theoretically knew from the
beginning of his ministry. His baptism was not intended merely to
set an example. It was a recognition that sin deserved death; that
he was numbered with the transgressors; that he was sent to die
for the sin of the world. He was not so much a teacher, as he was
the subject of all teaching. In him the great suffering of the
holy God on account of sin is exhibited to the universe. The pain
of a few brief hours saves a world, only because it sets forth an
eternal fact in God’s being and opens to us God’s very heart.

Shakespeare, Henry V, 4:1—“There is some soul of goodness in
things evil. Would men observingly distil it out.” It is well to
preach on Christ as an example. Lyman Abbott says that Jesus’
blood purchases our pardon and redeems us to God, just as a
patriot’s blood redeems his country from servitude and purchases
its liberty. But even Ritschl, Just. and Recon., 2, goes beyond
this, when he says: “Those who advocate the example theory should
remember that Jesus withdraws himself from imitation when he sets
himself over against his disciples as the Author of forgiveness.
And they perceive that pardon must first be appropriated, before
it is possible for them to imitate his piety and moral
achievement.” This is a partial recognition of the truth that the
removal of objective guilt by Christ’s atonement must precede the
removal of subjective defilement by Christ’s regenerating and
sanctifying Spirit. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement, 265-280,
shows that there is a fatherly demand for satisfaction, which must
be met by the filial response of the child. Thomas Chalmers at the
beginning of his ministry urged on his people the reformation of
their lives. But he confesses: “I never heard of any such
reformations being effected amongst them.” Only when he preached
the alienation of men from God, and forgiveness through the blood
of Christ, did he hear of their betterment.

Gordon, Christ of To-day, 129—“The consciousness of sin is largely
the creation of Christ.” Men like Paul, Luther, and Edwards show
this impressively. Foster, Christian life and Theology,
198-201—“There is of course a sense in which the Christian must
imitate Christ’s death, for he is to ‘_take up his cross daily_’
(_Luke 9:23_) and follow his Master; but in its highest meaning
and fullest scope the death of Christ is no more an object set for
our imitation than is the creation of the world.... Christ does
for man in his sacrifice what man could not do for himself. We see
in the Cross: 1. the magnitude of the guilt of sin; 2. our own
self-condemnation; 3. the adequate remedy,—for the object of law
is gained in the display of righteousness; 4. the objective ground
of forgiveness.” Maclaren: “Christianity without a dying Christ is
a dying Christianity.”

(_f_) This theory contradicts the whole tenor of the New Testament, in
making the life, and not the death, of Christ the most significant and
important feature of his work. The constant allusions to the death of
Christ as the source of our salvation, as well as the symbolism of the
ordinances, cannot be explained upon a theory which regards Christ as a
mere example, and considers his sufferings as incidents, rather than
essentials, of his work.

Dr. H. B. Hackett frequently called attention to the fact that the
recording in the gospels of only three years of Jesus’ life, and
the prominence given in the record to the closing scenes of that
life, are evidence that not his life, but his death, was the great
work of our Lord. Christ’s death, and not his life, is the central
truth of Christianity. The cross is _par excellence_ the Christian
symbol. In both the ordinances—in Baptism as well as in the Lord’s
Supper—it is the death of Christ that is primarily set forth.
Neither Christ’s example, nor his teaching, reveals God as does
his death. It is the death of Christ that links together all
Christian doctrines. The mark of Christ’s blood is upon them all,
as the scarlet thread running through every cord and rope of the
British navy gives sign that it is the property of the crown.

Did Jesus’ death have no other relation to our salvation than
Paul’s death had? Paul was a martyr, but his death is not even
recorded. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 92—“Paul does not dwell in any
way upon the life or work of our Lord, except as they are involved
in his death and resurrection.” What did Jesus’ words: “_It is
finished_” (_John 19:30_) mean? What was finished on the Socinian
theory? The Socinian salvation had not yet begun. Why did not
Jesus make the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be
memorials of his birth, rather than of his death? Why was not the
veil of the temple rent at his baptism, or at the Sermon on the
Mount? It was because only his death opened the way to God. In
talking with Nicodemus, Jesus brushed aside the complimentary:
“_we know that thou art a teacher come from God_” (_John 3:2_).
Recognizing Jesus as teacher is not enough. There must be a
renewal by the Spirit of God, so that one recognizes also the
lifting up of the Son of man as atoning Savior (_John 3:14, 15_).
And to Peter, Jesus said: “_If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
with me_” (_John 13:8_). One cannot have part with Christ as
Teacher, while one rejects him as Redeemer from sin. On the
Socinian doctrine of the Atonement, see Crawford, Atonement,
279-296; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:376-386; Doctrines of the
Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:156-180; Fock, Socinianismus.

2nd. The Bushnellian, or Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement.

This holds, like the Socinian, that there is no principle of the divine
nature which is propitiated by Christ’s death; but that this death is a
manifestation of the love of God, suffering in and with the sins of his
creatures. Christ’s atonement, therefore, is the merely natural
consequence of his taking human nature upon him; and is a suffering, not
of penalty in man’s stead, but of the combined woes and griefs which the
living of a human life involves. This atonement has effect, not to satisfy
divine justice, but so to reveal divine love as to soften human hearts and
to lead them to repentance; in other words, Christ’s sufferings were
necessary, not in order to remove an obstacle to the pardon of sinners
which exists in the mind of God, but in order to convince sinners that
there exists no such obstacle. This theory, for substance, has been
advocated by Bushnell, in America; by Robertson, Maurice, Campbell, and
Young, in Great Britain; by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, in Germany.

Origen and Abelard are earlier representatives of this view. It
may be found stated in Bushnell’s Vicarious Sacrifice. Bushnell’s
later work, Forgiveness and Law, contains a modification of his
earlier doctrine, to which he was driven by the criticisms upon
his Vicarious Sacrifice. In the later work, he acknowledges what
he had so strenuously denied in the earlier, namely, that Christ’s
death has effect upon God as well as upon man, and that God cannot
forgive without thus “making cost to himself.” He makes open
confession of the impotence of his former teaching to convert
sinners, and, as the only efficient homiletic, he recommends the
preaching of the very doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice which he
had written his book to supersede. Even in Forgiveness and Law,
however, there is no recognition of the true principle and ground
of the Atonement in God’s punitive holiness. Since the original
form of Bushnell’s doctrine is the only one which has met with
wide acceptance, we direct our objections mainly to this.

F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1:163-178, holds that Christ’s
sufferings were the necessary result of the position in which he
had placed himself of conflict or collision with the evil that is
in the world. He came in contact with the whirling wheel, and was
crushed by it; he planted his heel upon the cockatrice’s den, and
was pierced by its fang. Maurice, on Sacrifice, 209, and Theol.
Essays, 141, 228, regards Christ’s sufferings as an illustration,
given by the ideal man, of the self-sacrifice due to God from the
humanity of which he is the root and head, all men being redeemed
in him, irrespective of their faith, and needing only to have
brought to them the news of this redemption. Young, Life and Light
of Men, holds a view essentially the same with Robertson’s.
Christ’s death is the necessary result of his collision with evil,
and his sufferings extirpate sin, simply by manifesting God’s
self-sacrificing love,

Campbell, Atonement, 129-191, quotes from Edwards, to show that
infinite justice might be satisfied in either one of two ways: (1)
by an infinite punishment; (2) by an adequate repentance. This
last, which Edwards passed by as impracticable, Campbell declares
to have been the real atonement offered by Christ, who stands as
the great Penitent, confessing the sin of the world. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 160-210, takes substantially the view of Campbell,
denying substitution, and emphasizing Christ’s oneness with the
race and his confession of human sin. He grants indeed that our
Lord bore penalty, but only in the sense that he realized how
great was the condemnation and penalty of the race.

Schleiermacher denies any satisfaction to God by substitution. He
puts in its place an influence of Christ’s personality on men, so
that they feel themselves reconciled and redeemed. The atonement
is purely subjective. Yet it is the work of Christ, in that only
_Christ’s_ oneness with God has taught men that _they_ can be one
with God. Christ’s consciousness of his being in God and knowing
God, and his power to impart this consciousness to others, make
him a Mediator and Savior. The idea of reparation, compensation,
satisfaction, substitution, is wholly Jewish. He regarded it as
possible only to a narrow-minded people. He tells us that he hates
in religion that kind of historic relation. He had no such sense
of the holiness of God, or of the guilt of man, as would make
necessary any suffering of punishment or offering to God for human
sin. He desires to replace external and historical Christianity by
a Christianity that is internal and subjective. See
Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube, 2:94-161.

Ritschl however is the most recent and influential representative
of the Moral Influence theory in Germany. His view is to be found
in his Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, or in English translation,
Justification and Reconciliation. Ritschl is anti-Hegelian and
libertarian, but like Schleiermacher he does not treat sin with
seriousness; he regards the sense of guilt as an illusion which it
is the part of Christ to dispel; there is an inadequate conception
of Christ’s person, a practical denial of his pre-existence and
work of objective atonement; indeed, the work of Christ is hardly
put into any precise relation to sin at all; see Denney, Studies
in Theology, 136-151. E. H. Johnson: “Many Ritschlians deny both
the miraculous conception and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
Sin does not particularly concern God; Christ is Savior only as
Buddha was, achieving lordship over the world by indifference to
it; he is the Word of God, only as he reveals this divine
indifference to things. All this does not agree with the N. T.
teaching that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, that he was
with the Father before the world was, that he made expiation of
sins to God, and that sin is that abominable thing that God
hates.” For a general survey of the Ritschlian theology, see Orr,
Ritschlian Theology, 231-271; Presb. and Ref. Rev., July,
1891:443-458 (art. by Zahn), and Jan. 1892:1-21 (art. by C. M.
Mead); Andover Review, July, 1893:440-461; Am. Jour. Theology,
Jan. 1899:22-44 (art. by H. R. Mackintosh); Lidgett, Spir. Prin.
of Atonement, 190-207; Foster, Christ. Life and Theology; and the
work of Garvie on Ritschl. For statement and criticism of other
forms of the Moral Influence theory, see Crawford, Atonement,
297-366; Watts, New Apologetic, 210-247.

To this theory we object as follows:

(_a_) While it embraces a valuable element of truth, namely, the moral
influence upon men _of_ the sufferings of the God-man, it is false by
defect, in that it substitutes a subordinate effect of the atonement for
its chief aim, and yet unfairly appropriates the name “vicarious,” which
belongs only to the latter. Suffering _with_ the sinner is by no means
suffering _in his stead_.

Dale, Atonement, 137, illustrates Bushnell’s view by the loyal
wife, who suffers exile or imprisonment with her husband; by the
philanthropist, who suffers the privations and hardships of a
savage people, whom he can civilize only by enduring the miseries
from which he would rescue them; by the Moravian missionary, who
enters for life the lepers’ enclosure, that he may convert its
inmates. So Potwin says that suffering and death are the cost of
the atonement, not the atonement _itself_.

But we reply that such sufferings as these do not make Christ’s
sacrifice _vicarious_. The word “vicarious” (from _vicis_) implies
substitution, which this theory denies. The vicar of a parish is
not necessarily one who performs service with, and in sympathy
with, the rector,—he is rather one who stands in the rector’s
place. A vice-president is one who acts in place of the president;
“A. B., appointed consul, _vice_ C. D., resigned,” implies that A.
B. is now to serve in the stead of C. D. If Christ is a “vicarious
sacrifice,” then he makes atonement to God _in the place and
stead_ of sinners. Christ’s suffering _in and with sinners_,
though it is a most important and affecting fact, is not the
suffering in their stead in which the atonement consists. Though
suffering in and with sinners may be in part the _medium_ through
which Christ was enabled to endure God’s wrath against sin, it is
not to be confounded with the _reason_ why God lays this suffering
upon him; nor should it blind us to the fact that this reason is
his standing in the sinner’s place to answer for sin to the
retributive holiness of God.

(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that righteousness
is identical with benevolence, instead of conditioning it; that God is
subject to an eternal law of love, instead of being himself the source of
all law; that the aim of penalty is the reformation of the offender.

Hovey, God with Us, 181-271, has given one of the best replies to
Bushnell. He shows that if God is subject to an eternal law of
love, then God is necessarily a Savior; that he must have created
man as soon as he could; that he makes men holy as fast as
possible; that he does all the good he can; that he is no better
than he should be. But this is to deny the transcendence of God,
and reduce omnipotence to a mere nature-power. The conception of
God as subject to law imperils God’s self-sufficiency and freedom.
For Bushnell’s statements with regard to the identity of
righteousness and love, and for criticisms upon them, see our
treatment of the attribute of Holiness, vol. I, pages 268-275.

Watts, New Apologetic, 277-280, points out that, upon Bushnell’s
principles, there must be an atonement for fallen angels. God was
bound to assume the angelic nature and to do for angels all that
he has done for us. There is also no reason for restricting either
the atonement or the offer of salvation to the present life. B. B.
Warfield, in Princeton Review, 1903:81-92, shows well that all the
forms of the Moral Influence theory rest upon the assumption that,
God is only love, and that all that is required as ground of the
sinner’s forgiveness is penitence, either Christ’s, or his own, or
both together.

Ignoring the divine holiness and minimizing the guilt of sin, many
modern writers make atonement to be a mere incident of Christ’s
incarnation. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350, 351—“Atonement by
suffering is the result of the Incarnation; atonement being the
necessary, and suffering the incidental element of that result.
But sacrifice is an essential element, for sacrifice truly
signifies here the consecration of human nature to its highest use
and utterance, and does not necessarily involve the thought of
pain. It is not the destruction but the fulfilment of human life.
Inasmuch as the human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the
same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his consecration and
fulfilment makes morally possible for us the same consecration and
fulfilment of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement and
his sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, become vicarious.
It is not that they make unnecessary, but that they make possible
and successful in us, the same processes which were perfect in
him.”

(_c_) The theory furnishes no proper reason for Christ’s suffering. While
it shows that the Savior necessarily suffers from his contact with human
sin and sorrow, it gives no explanation of that constitution of the
universe which makes suffering the consequence of sin, not only to the
sinner, but also to the innocent being who comes into connection with sin.
The holiness of God, which is manifested in this constitution of things
and which requires this atonement, is entirely ignored.

B. W. Lockhart, in a recent statement of the doctrine of the
atonement, shows this defect of apprehension: “God in Christ
reconciled the world to himself; Christ did not reconcile God to
man, but man to God. Christ did not enable God to save men; God
enabled Christ to save men. The sufferings of Christ were
vicarious as the highest illustration of that spiritual law by
which the good soul is impelled to suffer that others may not
suffer, to die that others may not die. The vicarious sufferings
of Jesus were also the great revelation to man of the vicarious
nature of God; a revelation of the cross as eternal in his nature;
that it is in the heart of God to bear the sin and sorrow of his
creatures in his eternal love and pity; a revelation moreover that
the law which saves the lost through the vicarious labors of
godlike souls prevails wherever the godlike and the lost soul can
influence each other.”

While there is much in the above statement with which we agree, we
charge it with misapprehending the reason for Christ’s suffering.
That reason is to be found only in that holiness of God which
expresses itself in the very constitution of the universe. Not
love but holiness has made suffering invariably to follow sin, so
that penalty falls not only upon the transgressor but upon him who
is the life and sponsor of the transgressor. God’s holiness brings
suffering to God, and to Christ who manifests God. Love bears the
suffering, but it is holiness that necessitates it. The statement
of Lockhart above gives account of the effect—reconciliation; but
it fails to recognize the cause—propitiation. The words of E. G.
Robinson furnish the needed complement: “The work of Christ has
two sides, propitiatory and reconciling. Christ felt the pang of
association with a guilty race. The divine displeasure rested on
him as possessing the guilty nature. In his own person he redeems
this nature by bearing its penalty. Propitiation must precede
reconciliation. The Moral Influence theory recognizes the
necessity of a subjective change in man, but makes no provision of
an objective agency to secure it.”

(_d_) It contradicts the plain teachings of Scripture, that the atonement
is necessary, not simply to reveal God’s love, but to satisfy his justice;
that Christ’s sufferings are propitiatory and penal; and that the human
conscience needs to be propitiated by Christ’s sacrifice, before it can
feel the moral influence of his sufferings.

That the atonement is primarily an offering to God, and not to the
sinner, appears from _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave himself up for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God_”; _Heb. 9:14,_—“_offered himself
without blemish unto God._” Conscience, the reflection of God’s
holiness, can be propitiated only by propitiating holiness itself.
Mere love and sympathy are maudlin, and powerless to move, unless
there is a background of righteousness. Spear: “An appeal to man,
without anything back of it to emphasize and enforce the appeal,
will never touch the heart. The mere _appearance_ of an atonement
has no moral influence.” Crawford, Atonement, 358-367—“Instead of
delivering us from penalty, in order to deliver us from sin, this
theory made Christ to deliver us from sin, in order that he may
deliver us from penalty. But this reverses the order of Scripture.
And Dr. Bushnell concedes, in the end, that the moral view of the
atonement is morally powerless; and that the Objective view he
condemns is, after all, indispensable to the salvation of
sinners.”

Some men are quite ready to forgive those whom they have offended.
The Ritschlian school sees no guilt to be atoned for, and no
propitiation to be necessary. Only man needs to be reconciled.
Ritschlians are quite ready to forgive God. The only atonement is
an atonement, made by repentance, to the human conscience. Shedd
says well: “All that is requisite in order to satisfaction and
peace of conscience in the sinful soul is also requisite in order
to the satisfaction of God himself.” Walter Besant: “It is not
enough to be forgiven,—one has also to forgive one’s self.” The
converse proposition is yet more true: It is not enough to forgive
one’s self,—one has also to be forgiven; indeed, one cannot
rightly forgive one’s self, unless one has been first forgiven; _1
John 3:20_—“_if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things._” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the
Spirit, 201—“As the high priest carried the blood into the Holy of
Holies under the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the
blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the new
dispensation, in order that he may ‘_cleanse your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God_’ (_Heb. 9:14_).”

(_e_) It can be maintained, only by wresting from their obvious meaning
those passages of Scripture which speak of Christ as suffering for our
sins; which represent his blood as accomplishing something for us in
heaven, when presented there by our intercessor; which declare forgiveness
to be a remitting of past offences upon the ground of Christ’s death; and
which describe justification as a pronouncing, not a making, just.

We have seen that the forms in which the Scriptures describe
Christ’s death are mainly drawn from sacrifice. Notice Bushnell’s
acknowledgment that these “altar-forms” are the most vivid and
effective methods of presenting Christ’s work, and that the
preacher cannot dispense with them. Why he should not dispense
with them, if the meaning has gone out of them, is not so clear.

In his later work, entitled Forgiveness and Law, Bushnell appears
to recognize this inconsistency, and represents God as affected by
the atonement, after all; in other words, the atonement has an
objective as well as a subjective influence. God can forgive, only
by “making cost to himself.” He “works down his resentment, by
suffering for us.” This verges toward the true view, but it does
not recognize the demand of divine holiness for satisfaction; and
it attributes passion, weakness, and imperfection to God. Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:591 (Syst. Doct., 4:59, 69), objects to this
modified Moral Influence theory, that the love that can do good to
an enemy is _already forgiving_ love; so that the benefit to the
enemy cannot be, as Bushnell supposes, a _condition of the
forgiveness_.

To Campbell’s view, that Christ is the great Penitent, and that
his atonement consists essentially in his confessing the sins of
the world, we reply, that no confession or penitence is possible
without responsibility. If Christ had no substitutionary office,
the ordering of his sufferings on the part of God was manifest
injustice. Such sufferings, moreover, are impossible upon grounds
of mere sympathy. The Scripture explains them by declaring that he
bore our curse, and became a ransom in our place. There was more
therefore in the sufferings of Christ than “a perfect Amen in
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” Not Phinehas’s
zeal for God, but his execution of judgment, made an atonement
(_Ps. 106:30_—“_executed judgment_”—LXX.: ἐξιλάσατο, “_made
propitiation_”) and turned away the wrath of God. Observe here the
contrast between the _priestly_ atonement of Aaron, who stood
between the living and the dead, and the _judicial_ atonement of
Phinehas, who executed righteous judgment, and so turned away
wrath. In neither case did mere _confession_ suffice to take away
sin. On Campbell’s view see further, on page 760.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 98, has the great merit of
pointing out that Christ shares our sufferings in virtue of the
fact that our personality has its ground in him; but that this
sharing of our penalty was necessitated by God’s righteousness he
has failed to indicate. He tells us that “Christ sanctified the
present and cancels the past. He offers to God a living holiness
in human conditions and character; he makes the awful sacrifice in
humanity of a perfect contrition. The one is the offering of
obedience, the other the offering of atonement; the one the
offering of the life, the other the offering of the death.” This
modification of Campbell’s view can be rationally maintained only
by connecting with it a prior declaration that the fundamental
attribute of God is holiness; that holiness is self-affirming
righteousness; that this righteousness necessarily expresses
itself in the punishment of sin; that Christ’s relation to the
race as its upholder and life made him the bearer of its guilt and
justly responsible for its sin. Scripture declares the ultimate
aim of the atonement to be that God “_might himself be just_”
(_Rom. 3:26_), and no theory of the atonement will meet the
demands of either reason or conscience that does not ground its
necessity in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love.

E. Y. Mullins: “If Christ’s union with humanity made it possible
for him to be ‘the representative Penitent,’ and to be the Amen of
humanity to God’s just condemnation of sin, his union with God
made it also possible for him to be the representative of the
Judge, and to be the Amen of the divine nature to suffering, as
the expression of condemnation.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 102,
103—“The serious element in sin is not man’s dislike, suspicion,
alienation from God, nor the debilitating, corrupting effects of
vice in human nature, but rather God’s condemnation of man. This
Christ endured, and died that the condemnation might be removed.
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood;
Sealed my pardon with his blood; Hallelujah!’ ”

Bushnell regards _Mat. 8:17_—“_Himself took our infirmities, and
bare our diseases_”—as indicating the nature of Christ’s atoning
work. The meaning then would be, that he sympathized so fully with
all human ills that he made them his own. Hovey, however, has
given a more complete and correct explanation. The words mean
rather: “His deep sympathy with these effects of sin so moved him,
that it typified his final bearing of the sins themselves, or
constituted a preliminary and partial endurance of the suffering
which was to expiate the sins of men.” His sighing when he cured
the deaf man (_Mark 7:34_) and his weeping at the grave of Lazarus
(_John 11:35_) were caused by the anticipatory realization that he
was one with the humanity which was under the curse, and that he
too had “_become a curse for us_” (_Gal. 3:13_). The great error
of Bushnell is his denial of the objective necessity and effect of
Jesus’ death, and all Scripture which points to an influence of
the atonement outside of us is a refutation of his theory.

(_f_) This theory confounds God’s method of saving men with men’s
experience of being saved. It makes the atonement itself consist of its
effects in the believer’s union with Christ and the purifying influence of
that union upon the character and life.

Stevens, in his Doctrine of Salvation, makes this mistake. He
says: “The old forms of the doctrine of the atonement—that the
suffering of Christ was necessary to appease the wrath of God and
induce him to forgive; or to satisfy the law of God and enable him
to forgive; or to move upon man’s heart to induce him to accept
forgiveness; have all proved inadequate. Yet to reject the passion
of Christ is to reject the chief element of power in
Christianity.... To me the words ‘eternal atonement’ denote the
dateless passion of God on account of sin; they mean that God is,
by his very nature, a sin-bearer—that sin grieves and wounds his
heart, and that he sorrows and suffers in consequence of it. It
results from the divine love—alike from its holiness and from its
sympathy—that ‘in our affliction he is afflicted.’ Atonement on
its ‘Godward side’ is a name for the grief and pain inflicted by
sin upon the paternal heart of God. Of this divine sorrow for sin,
the afflictions of Christ are a revelation. In the bitter grief
and anguish which he experienced on account of sin we see
reflected the pain and sorrow which sin brings to the divine
love.”

All this is well said, with the exception that holiness is
regarded as a form of love, and the primary offence of sin is
regarded as the grieving of the Father’s heart. Dr. Stevens fails
to consider that if love were supreme there would be nothing to
prevent unholy tolerance of sin. Because holiness is supreme, love
is conditioned thereby. It is holiness and not love that connects
suffering with sin, and requires that the Redeemer should suffer.
Dr. Stevens asserts that the theories hitherto current in
Protestant churches and the theory for which he pleads are
“forever irreconcilable”; they are “based on radically different
conceptions of God.” The British Weekly, Nov. 16, 1905—“The
doctrine of the atonement is not the doctrine that salvation is
deliverance from sin, and that this deliverance is the work of
God, a work the motive of which is God’s love for men; these are
truths which every one who writes on the Atonement assumes. The
doctrine of the Atonement has for its task to explain _how_ this
work is done.... Dr. Stevens makes no contribution whatever to its
fulfilment. He grants that we have in Paul ‘the theory of a
substitutionary expiation.’ But he finds something else in Paul
which he thinks a more adequate rendering of the apostle’s
Christian experience—the idea, namely, of dying with Christ and
rising with him; and on the strength of accepting this last he
feels at liberty to drop the substitutionary expiation overboard
as something to be explained from Paul’s controversial position,
or from his Pharisaic inheritance, something at all events which
has no permanent value for the Christian mind.... The experience
is dependent on the method. Paul did not die with Christ as an
alternative to having Christ die with him; he died with Christ
wholly and solely because Christ died for him. It was the meaning
carried by the last two words—the meaning unfolded in the theory
of substitutionary expiation—which had the moral motive in it to
draw Paul into union with his Lord in life and death.... On Dr.
Stevens’ own showing, Paul held the two ideas side by side; for
him the mystical union with Christ was only possible through the
acceptance of truths with which Dr. Stevens does not know what to
do.”

(_g_) This theory would confine the influence of the atonement to those
who have heard of it,—thus excluding patriarchs and heathen. But the
Scriptures represent Christ as being the Savior of all men, in the sense
of securing them grace, which, but for his atoning work, could never have
been bestowed consistently with the divine holiness.

Hovey: “The manward influence of the atonement is far more
extensive than the moral influence of it.” Christ is Advocate, not
with the sinner, but with the Father. While the Spirit’s work has
moral influence over the hearts of men, the Son secures, through
the presentation of his blood, in heaven, the pardon which can
come only from God (_1 John 2:1_—“_we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for
our sins_”). Hence _1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he_ [God] _is
faithful and righteous [faithful to his promise and righteous to
Christ] to forgive us our sins._” Hence the publican does not
first pray for change of heart, but for mercy upon the ground of
sacrifice (_Luke 18:13,_—“_God, be thou merciful to me a sinner,_”
but literally: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”). See
Balfour, in Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., Apr. 1884:230-254; Martin,
Atonement, 216-237; Theol. Eclectic, 4:364-409.

Gravitation kept the universe stable, long before it was
discovered by man. So the atonement of Christ was inuring to the
salvation of men, long before they suspected its existence. The
“_Light of the world_” (_John 8:12_) has many “X rays,” beyond the
visible spectrum, but able to impress the image of Christ upon
patriarchs or heathen. This light has been shining through all the
ages, but “_the darkness apprehended it not_” (_John 1:5_). Its
rays register themselves only where there is a sensitive heart to
receive them. Let them shine through a man, and how much unknown
sin, and unknown possibilities of good, they reveal! The Moral
Influence theory does not take account of the preëxistent Christ
and of his atoning work before his manifestation in the flesh. It
therefore leads logically to belief in a second probation for the
many imbeciles, outcasts, and heathen who in this world do not
hear of Christ’s atonement. The doctrine of Bushnell in this way
undermines the doctrine of future retribution.

To Lyman Abbott, the atonement is the self-propitiation of God’s
love, and its influence is exerted through education. In his
Theology of an Evolutionist, 118, 190, he maintains that the
atonement is “a true reconciliation between God and man, making
them at one through the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ,
who lived and suffered, not to redeem men from future torment, but
to purify and perfect them in God’s likeness by uniting them to
God.... Sacrifice is not a penalty borne by an innocent sufferer
for guilty men,—a doctrine for which there is no authority either
in Scripture or in life (_1 Peter 3:18?_)—but a laying down of
one’s life in love, that another may receive life.... Redemption
is not restoration to a lost state of innocence, impossible to be
restored, but a culmination of the long process when man shall be
presented before his Father ‘_not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing_’ (_Eph. 5:27_).... We believe not in the propitiation
of an angry God by another suffering to appease the Father’s
wrath, but in the perpetual self-propitiation of the Father, whose
mercy, going forth to redeem from sin, satisfies as nothing else
could the divine indignation against sin, by abolishing it....
Mercy is hate pitying; it is the pity of wrath. The pity conquers
the hate only by lifting the sinner up from his degradation and
restoring him to purity.” And yet in all this there is no mention
of the divine righteousness as the source of the indignation and
the object of the propitiation!

It is interesting to note that some of the greatest advocates of
the Moral Influence theory have reverted to the older faith when
they came to die. In his dying moments, as L. W. Munhall tells us,
Horace Bushnell said: “I fear what I have written and said upon
the moral idea of the atonement is misleading and will do great
harm;” and, as he thought of it further, he cried: “Oh Lord Jesus,
I trust for mercy only in the shed blood that thou didst offer on
Calvary!” Schleiermacher, on his deathbed, assembled his family
and a few friends, and himself administered the Lord’s Supper.
After praying and blessing the bread, and after pronouncing the
words: “_This is my body, broken for you_,” he added: “This is our
foundation!” As he started to bless the cup, he cried: “Quick,
quick, bring the cup! I am so happy!” Then he sank quietly back,
and was no more; see life of Rothe, by Nippold, 2:53, 54. Ritschl,
in his History of Pietism, 2:65, had severely criticized Paul
Gerhardt’s hymn: “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” as describing
physical suffering; but he begged his son to repeat the two last
verses of that hymn: “O sacred head now wounded!” when he came to
die. And in general, the convicted sinner finds peace most quickly
and surely when he is pointed to the Redeemer who died on the
Cross and endured the penalty of sin in his stead.

3d. The Grotian, or Governmental Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that the atonement is a satisfaction, not to any
internal principle of the divine nature, but to the necessities of
government. God’s government of the universe cannot be maintained, nor can
the divine law preserve its authority over its subjects, unless the pardon
of offenders is accompanied by some exhibition of the high estimate which
God sets upon his law, and the heinous guilt of violating it. Such an
exhibition of divine regard for the law is furnished in the sufferings and
death of Christ. Christ does not suffer the precise penalty of the law,
but God graciously accepts his suffering as a substitute for the penalty.
This bearing of substituted suffering on the part of Christ gives the
divine law such hold upon the consciences and hearts of men, that God can
pardon the guilty upon their repentance, without detriment to the
interests of his government. The author of this theory was Hugo Grotius,
the Dutch jurist and theologian (1583-1645). The theory is characteristic
of the New England theology, and is generally held by those who accept the
New School view of sin.

Grotius was a precocious genius. He wrote good Latin verses at
nine years of age; was ripe for the University at twelve: edited
the encyclopædic work of Marcianus Capella at fifteen. Even thus
early he went with an embassy to the court of France, where he
spent a year. Returning home, he took the degree of doctor of
laws. In literature he edited the remains of Aratus, and wrote
three dramas in Latin. At twenty he was appointed historiographer
of the United Provinces; then advocate-general of the fisc for
Holland and Zealand. He wrote on international law; was appointed
deputy to England; was imprisoned for his theological opinions;
escaped to Paris; became ambassador of Sweden to France. He wrote
commentaries on Scripture, also history, theology, and poetry. He
was indifferent to dogma, a lover of peace, a compromiser, an
unpartisan believer, dealing with doctrine more as a statesman
than as a theologian. Of Grotius, Dr. E. G. Robinson used to say:
“It is ordained of almighty God that the man who dips into
everything never gets to the bottom of anything.”

Grotius, the jurist, conceived of law as a mere matter of
political expediency—a device to procure practical governmental
results. The text most frequently quoted in support of his theory,
is _Is. 42:21_—“_It pleased Jehovah, for his righteousness’ sake,
to magnify the law, and make it honorable._” Strangely enough, the
explanation is added: “even when its demands are unfulfilled.”
Park: “Christ satisfied the law, by making it desirable and
consistent for God not to come up to the demands of the law.
Christ suffers a divine chastisement in consequence of our sins.
Christ was cursed for Adam’s sin, just as the heavens and the
earth were cursed for Adam’s sin,—that is, he bore pains and
sufferings on account of it.”

Grotius used the word _acceptilatio_, by which he meant God’s
sovereign provision of a suffering which was not itself penalty,
but which he had determined to accept as a substitute for penalty.
Here we have a virtual denial that there is anything in God’s
nature that requires Christ to suffer; for if penalty may be
remitted in part, it may be remitted in whole, and the reason why
Christ suffers at all is to be found, not in any demand of God’s
holiness, but solely in the beneficial influence of these
sufferings upon man; so that in principle this theory is allied to
the Example theory and the Moral Influence theory, already
mentioned.

Notice the difference between holding to a _substitute for
penalty_, as Grotius did, and holding to an _equivalent
substituted penalty_, as the Scriptures do. Grotius’s own
statement of his view may be found in his Defensio Fidei Catholicæ
de Satisfactione (Works, 4:297-338). More modern statements of it
are those of Wardlaw, in his Systematic Theology, 2:358-395, and
of Albert Barnes, on the Atonement. The history of New England
thought upon the subject is given in Discourses and Treatises on
the Atonement, edited by Prof. Park, of Andover. President
Woolsey: “Christ’s suffering was due to a deep and awful sense of
responsibility, a conception of the supreme importance to man of
his standing firm at this crisis. He bore, not the wrath of God,
but suffering, as the only way of redemption so far as men’s own
feeling of sin was concerned, and so far as the government of God
was concerned.” This unites the Governmental and the Moral
Influence theories.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 226, 227—“Grotius emphasized
the idea of law rather than that of justice, and made the
sufferings of Christ a legal example and the occasion of the
relaxation of the law, and not the strict penalty demanded by
justice. But this view, however it may have been considered and
have served in the clarification of the thinking of the times, met
with no general reception, and left little trace of itself among
those theologians who maintained the line of evangelical
theological descent.”

To this theory we urge the following objections:

(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, namely, that the
sufferings and death of Christ secure the interests of God’s government,
it is false by defect, in substituting for the chief aim of the atonement
one which is only subordinate and incidental.

In our discussion of Penalty (pages 655, 656), we have seen that
the object of punishment is not primarily the security of
government. It is not right to punish a man for the beneficial
effect on society. Ill-desert must go before punishment, or the
punishment can have no beneficial effect on society. No punishment
can work good to society, that is not just and right in itself.

(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that utility is
the ground of moral obligation; that law is an expression of the will,
rather than of the nature, of God; that the aim of penalty is to deter
from the commission of offences; and that righteousness is resolvable into
benevolence.

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:573-581; 3:188, 189—“For God to take that
as satisfaction which is not really such, is to say that there is
no truth in anything. God may take a part for the whole, error for
truth, wrong for right. The theory really denies the necessity for
the work of Christ. If every created thing offered to God is worth
just so much as God accepts it for, then the blood of bulls and
goats might take away sins, and Christ is dead in vain.” Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:570, 571 (Syst. Doct., 4:38-40)—“_Acceptilatio_
implies that nothing is good and right in itself. God is
indifferent to good or evil. Man is bound by authority and force
alone. There is no necessity of punishment or atonement. The
doctrine of indulgences and of supererogation logically follows.”

(_c_) It ignores and virtually denies that immanent holiness of God of
which the law with its threatened penalties, and the human conscience with
its demand for punishment, are only finite reflections. There is something
back of government; if the atonement satisfies government, it must be by
satisfying that justice of God of which government is an expression.

No deeply convicted sinner feels that his controversy is with
government. Undone and polluted, he feels himself in antagonism to
the purity of a personal God. Government is not greater than God,
but less. What satisfies God must satisfy government. Hence the
sinner prays: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps.
51:4_); “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_” (literal
translation of _Luke 18:13_),—propitiated through God’s own
appointed sacrifice whose smoke is ascending in his behalf even
while he prays.

In the divine government this theory recognizes no constitution,
but only legislative enactment; even this legislative enactment is
grounded in no necessity of God’s nature, but only in expediency
or in God’s arbitrary will; law may be abrogated for merely
economic reasons, if any incidental good may be gained thereby. J.
M. Campbell, Atonement, 81, 144—“No awakened sinner, into whose
spirit the terrors of the law have entered, ever thinks of
rectoral justice, but of absolute justice, and of absolute justice
only.... Rectoral justice so presupposes absolute justice, and so
throws the mind back on that absolute justice, that the idea of an
atonement that will satisfy the one, though it might not the
other, is a delusion.”

N. W. Taylor’s Theology was entitled: “Moral Government,” and C.
G. Finney’s Systematic Theology was a treatise on Moral
Government, although it called itself by another name. But because
New England ideas of government were not sufficiently grounded in
God’s holiness, but were rather based upon utility, expediency, or
happiness, the very idea of government has dropped out of the New
School theology, and its advocates with well-nigh one accord have
gone over to the Moral Influence theory of the atonement, which is
only a modified Socinianism. Both the Andover atonement and that
of Oberlin have become purely subjective. For this reason the
Grotian or Governmental theory has lost its hold upon the
theological world and needs to have no large amount of space
devoted to it.

(_d_) It makes that to be an exhibition of justice which is not an
exercise of justice; the atonement being, according to this theory, not an
execution of law, but an exhibition of regard for law, which will make it
safe to pardon the violators of law. Such a merely scenic representation
can inspire respect for law, only so long as the essential unreality of it
is unsuspected.

To teach that sin will be punished, there must be punishment.
Potwin: “How the exhibition of what sin deserves, but does not
get, can satisfy justice, is hard to see.” The Socinian view of
Christ as an example of virtue is more intelligible than the
Grotian view of Christ as an example of chastisement. Lyman
Abbott: “If I thought that Jesus suffered and died to produce a
moral impression on me, it would not produce a moral impression on
me.” William Ashmore: “A stage tragedian commits a mock murder in
order to move people to tears. If Christ was in no sense a
substitute, or if he was not co-responsible with the sinner he
represents, then God and Christ are participants in a real tragedy
the most awful that ever darkened human history, simply for the
sake of its effect on men to move their callous sensibilities—a
stage-trick for the same effect.”

The mother pretends to cry in order to induce her child to obey.
But the child will obey only while it thinks the mother’s grief a
reality, and the last state of that child is worse than the first.
Christ’s atonement is no passion-play. Hell cannot be cured by
homœopathy. The sacrifice of Calvary is no dramatic exhibition of
suffering for the purpose of producing a moral impression on
awe-stricken spectators. It is an object-lesson, only because it
is a reality. All God’s justice and all God’s love are focused in
the Cross, so that it teaches more of God and his truth than all
space and time beside.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 5, speaks of “mist, the common
gloss of theologians.” Such mist is the legal fiction by which
Christ’s suffering is taken in place of legal penalty, while yet
it is not the legal penalty itself. B. G. Robinson: “Atonement is
not an arbitrary contrivance, so that if one person will endure a
certain amount of suffering, a certain number of others may go
scot-free.” Mercy never cheats justice. Yet the New School theory
of atonement admits that Christ cheated justice by a trick. It
substituted the penalty of Christ for the penalty of the redeemed,
and then substituted something else for the penalty of Christ.

(_e_) The intensity of Christ’s sufferings in the garden and on the cross
is inexplicable upon the theory that the atonement was a histrionic
exhibition of God’s regard for his government, and can be explained only
upon the view that Christ actually endured the wrath of God against human
sin.

Christ refused the “_wine mingled with myrrh_” (_Mark 15:23_),
that he might to the last have full possession of his powers and
speak no words but words of truth and soberness. His cry of agony:
“_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” (_Mat. 27:46_), was
not an ejaculation of thoughtless or delirious suffering. It
expressed the deepest meaning of the crucifixion. The darkening of
the heavens was only the outward symbol of the hiding of the
countenance of God from him who was “_made to be sin on our
behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). In the case of Christ, above that of all
others, _finis coronat_, and dying words are undying words. “The
tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony; When
words are scarce they’re seldom spent in vain, For they breathe
truth that breathe their words in pain.” _Versus_ Park,
Discourses, 328-355.

A pure woman needs to meet an infamous proposition with something
more than a mild refusal. She must flame up and be angry. _Ps.
97:10_—“_O ye that love Jehovah, hate evil_”; _Eph. 4:26_—“_Be ye
angry, and sin not._” So it belongs to the holiness of God not to
let sin go unchallenged. God not only _shows_ anger, but he _is_
angry. It is the wrath of God which sin must meet, and which
Christ must meet when he is numbered with the transgressors. Death
was the cup of which he was to drink (_Mat. 20:22_; _John 18:11_),
and which he drained to the dregs. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
196—“Jesus alone of all men truly ‘_tasted death_’ (_Heb. 2:9_).
Some men are too stolid and unimaginative to taste it. To
Christians the bitterness of death is gone, just because Christ
died and rose again. But to Jesus its terrors were as yet
undiminished. He resolutely set all his faculties to sound to the
depths the dreadfulness of dying.”

We therefore cannot agree with either Wendt or Johnson in the
following quotations. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:249, 250—“The
forsaking of the Father was not an absolute one, since Jesus still
called him ‘_My God_’ (_Mat. 27:46_). Jesus felt the failing of
that energy of spirit which had hitherto upheld him, and he
expresses simply his ardent desire and prayer that God would once
more grant him his power and assistance.” E. H. Johnson, The Holy
Spirit, 143, 144—“It is not even necessary to believe that God hid
his face from Christ at the last moment. It is necessary only to
admit that Christ no longer saw the Father’s face.... He felt that
it was so; but it was not so.” These explanations make Christ’s
sufferings and Christ’s words unreal, and to our mind they are
inconsistent with both his deity and his atonement.

(_f_) The actual power of the atonement over the human conscience and
heart is due, not to its exhibiting God’s regard for law, but to its
exhibiting an actual execution of law, and an actual satisfaction of
violated holiness made by Christ in the sinner’s stead.

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 143, 144, claims that Christ is the
propitiation for our sins only by bringing peace to the conscience
and satisfying the divine demand that is felt therein. Whiton
regards the atonement not as a governmental work outside of us,
but as an educational work within. Aside from the objection that
this view merges God’s transcendence in his immanence, we urge the
words of Matthew Henry: “Nothing can satisfy an offended
conscience but that which satisfied an offended God.” C. J.
Baldwin: “The lake spread out has no moving power; it turns the
mill-wheel only when contracted into the narrow stream and pouring
over the fall. So the wide love of God moves men, only when it is
concentrated into the sacrifice of the cross.”

(_g_) The theory contradicts all those passages of Scripture which
represent the atonement as necessary; as propitiating God himself; as
being a revelation of God’s righteousness; as being an execution of the
penalty of the law; as making salvation a matter of debt to the believer,
on the ground of what Christ has done; as actually purging our sins,
instead of making that purging possible; as not simply assuring the sinner
that God may now pardon him on account of what Christ has done, but that
Christ has actually wrought out a complete salvation, and will bestow it
upon all who come to him.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, chapter vi—“Upon that place stood
a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw
in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his
burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back,
and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the
mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry
heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.
Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very
surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him
of his burden.”

John Bunyan’s story is truer to Christian experience than is the
Governmental theory. The sinner finds peace, not by coming to God
with a distant respect to Christ, but by coming directly to the
“_Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world_” (_John
1:29_). Christ’s words to every conscious sinner are simply:
“_Come unto me_” (_Mat. 11:28_). Upon the ground of what Christ
has done, salvation is a matter of debt to the believer. _1 John
1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins_”—faithful to his promise, and righteous to
Christ. The Governmental theory, on the other hand, tends to
discourage the sinner’s direct access to Christ, and to render the
way to conscious acceptance with God more circuitous and less
certain.

When The Outlook says: “Not even to the Son of God must we come
instead of coming to God,” we can see only plain denial of the
validity of Christ’s demands and promises, for he demands
immediate submission when he bids the sinner follow him, and he
promises immediate salvation when he assures all who come to him
that he will not cast them out. The theory of Grotius is legal and
speculative, but it is not Scriptural, nor does it answer the
needs of human nature. For criticism of Albert Barnes’s doctrine,
see Watts, New Apologetic, 210-300. For criticism of the Grotian
theory in general, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:347-369; Crawford,
Atonement, 367; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 2:355; Princeton
Essays, 1:259-292; Essay on Atonement, by Abp. Thomson, in Aids to
Faith; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 194-196; S. H. Tyng,
Christian Pastor; Charles Hodge, Essays, 129-184; Lidgett, Spir.
Prin. of Atonement, 151-154.

4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually Extirpated Depravity.

This holds that, in his incarnation, Christ took human nature as it was in
Adam, not before the Fall, but after the Fall,—human nature, therefore,
with its inborn corruption and predisposition to moral evil; that,
notwithstanding the possession of this tainted and depraved nature,
Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, or of his divine nature, not
only kept his human nature from manifesting itself in any actual or
personal sin, but gradually purified it, through struggle and suffering,
until in his death he completely extirpated its original depravity, and
reunited it to God. This subjective purification of human nature in the
person of Jesus Christ constitutes his atonement, and men are saved, not
by any objective propitiation, but only by becoming through faith
partakers of Christ’s new humanity. This theory was elaborated by Edward
Irving, of London (1792-1834), and it has been held, in substance, by
Menken and Dippel in Germany.

Irving was in this preceded by Felix of Urgella, in Spain († 818),
whom Alcuin opposed. Felix said that the Logos united with human
nature, without sanctifying it beforehand. Edward Irving, in his
early life colleague of Dr. Chalmers, at Glasgow, was in his later
years a preacher, in London, of the National Church of Scotland.
For his own statement of his view of the Atonement, see his
Collected Works, 5:9-398. See also Life of Irving, by Mrs.
Oliphant; Menken, Schriften, 3:279-404; 6:351 _sq._; Guericke, in
Studien und Kritiken, 1843: Heft 2; David Brown, in Expositor,
Oct. 1887:264 _sq._, and letter of Irving to Marcus Dods, in
British Weekly, Mch. 25, 1887. For other references, see
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:496-498.

Irving’s followers differ in their representation of his views.
Says Miller, Hist. and Doct. of Irvingism, 1:85—“If indeed we made
Christ a sinner, then indeed all creeds are at an end and we are
worthy to die the death of blasphemers.... The miraculous
conception depriveth him of human personality, and it also
depriveth him of original sin and guilt needing to be atoned for
by another, but it doth not deprive him of the substance of sinful
flesh and blood,—that is, flesh and blood the same with the flesh
and blood of his brethren.” 2:14—Freer says: “So that, despite it
was fallen flesh he had assumed, he was, through the Eternal
Spirit, born into the world ‘the Holy Thing’.” 11-15,
282-305—“Unfallen humanity needed not redemption, therefore, Jesus
did not take it. He took fallen humanity, but purged it in the act
of taking it. The nature of which he took part was sinful in the
lump, but in his person most holy.”

So, says an Irvingian tract, “Being part of the very nature that
had incurred the penalty of sin, though in his person never having
committed or even thought it, part of the common humanity could
suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make atonement for that
nature, though he who took it knew no sin.” Dr. Curry, quoted in
McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664—“The Godhead came
into vital union with humanity fallen and under the law. The last
thought carried, to Irving’s realistic mode of thinking, the
notion of Christ’s participation in the fallen character of
humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real
sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of
that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly
expelled, by the indwelling Godhead.”

We must regard the later expounders of Irvingian doctrine as
having softened down, if they have not wholly expunged, its most
characteristic feature, as the following notation from Irving’s
own words will show: Works, 5:115—“That Christ took our fallen
nature, is most manifest, because there was no other in existence
to take.” 123—“The human nature is thoroughly fallen; the mere
apprehension of it by the Son doth not make it holy.” 128—“His
soul did mourn and grieve and pray to God continually, that it
might be delivered from the mortality, corruption, and temptation
which it felt in its fleshly tabernacle.” 152—“These sufferings
came not by imputation merely, but by actual participation of the
sinful and cursed thing.” Irving frequently quoted _Heb.
2:10_—“_make the author of their salvation perfect through
sufferings._”

Irving’s followers deny Christ’s sinfulness, only by assuming that
inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin,—in
other words, that not native depravity, but only actual
transgression, is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment,
was rightly charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ’s
human nature, and it was upon this charge that he was deposed from
the ministry by the Presbytery in Scotland.

Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and
graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time
in London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after
the opening of his new church in Regent’s Square in 1827, he found
that fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no
longer crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of
Satan; he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly
to the study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts
were revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the
primitive church, although he himself was relegated to a
comparatively subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and
died at the age of forty-two. “If I had married Irving,” said Mrs.
Thomas Carlyle, “there would have been no tongues.”

To this theory we offer the following objections:

(_a_) While it embraces an important element of truth, namely, the fact of
a new humanity in Christ of which all believers become partakers, it is
chargeable with serious error in denying the objective atonement which
makes the subjective application possible.

Bruce, in his Humiliation of Christ, calls this a theory of
“redemption by sample.” It is a purely subjective atonement which
Irving has in mind. Deliverance from sin, in order to deliverance
from penalty, is an exact reversal of the Scripture order. Yet
this deliverance from sin, to Irving’s view, was to be secured in
an external and mechanical way. He held that it was the Old
Testament economy which should abide, while the New Testament
economy should pass away. This is Sacramentarianism, or dependence
upon the external rite, rather than upon the internal grace, as
essential to salvation. The followers of Irving are
Sacramentarians. The crucifix and candles, incense and gorgeous
vestments, a highly complicated and symbolic ritual, they regard
as a necessary accompaniment of religion. They feel the need of
external authority, visible and permanent, but one that rests upon
inspiration and continual supernatural help. They do not find this
authority, as the Romanists do, in the Pope,—they find it in their
new Apostles and Prophets. The church can never be renewed, as
they think, except by the restoration of all the ministering
orders mentioned in _Eph. 4:11_—“_apostles ... prophets ...
evangelists ... pastors ... teachers._” But the N. T. mark of an
apostle is that Christ has appeared to him. Irving’s apostles
cannot stand this test. See Luthardt, Erinnerungen aus vergangenen
Tagen, 237.

(_b_) It rests upon false fundamental principles,—as, that law is
identical with the natural order of the universe, and as such, is an
exhaustive expression of the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a
power of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving an
objective guilt and desert of punishment; that penalty is the mere
reaction of law against the transgressor, instead of being also the
revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the evil taint of human
nature can be extirpated by suffering its natural consequences,—penalty in
this way reforming the transgressor.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:463 (Syst. Doct., 3:361, 362)—“On
Irving’s theory, evil inclinations are not sinful. Sinfulness
belongs only to evil acts. The loose connection between the Logos
and humanity savors of Nestorianism. It is the work of the
_person_ to rid itself of something in the humanity which does not
render it really sinful. If Jesus’ sinfulness of nature did not
render his person sinful, this must be true of us,—which is a
Pelagian element, revealed also in the denial that for our
redemption we need Christ as an atoning sacrifice. It is not
necessary to a complete incarnation for Christ to take a _sinful_
nature, unless sin is _essential_ to human nature. In Irving’s
view, the death of Christ’s body works the regeneration of his
sinful nature. But this is to make sin a merely physical thing,
and the body the only part of man needing redemption.” Penalty
would thus become a reformer, and death a Savior.

Irving held that there are two kinds of sin: 1. guiltless sin; 2.
guilty sin. Passive depravity is not guilty; it is a part of man’s
sensual nature; without it we would not be human. But the moment
this fallen nature expresses itself in action, it becomes guilty.
Irving near the close of his life claimed a sort of sinless
perfection; for so long as he could keep this sinful nature
inactive, and be guided by the Holy Spirit, he was free from sin
and guilt. Christ took this passive sin, that he might be like
unto his brethren, and that he might be able to suffer.

(_c_) It contradicts the express and implicit representations of
Scripture, with regard to Christ’s freedom from all taint of hereditary
depravity; misrepresents his life as a growing consciousness of the
underlying corruption of his human nature, which culminated at Gethsemane
and Calvary; and denies the truth of his own statements, when it declares
that he must have died on account of his own depravity, even though none
were to be saved thereby.

“I shall maintain until death,” said Irving, “that the flesh of
Christ was as rebellious as ours, as fallen as ours.... Human
nature was corrupt to the core and black as hell, and this is the
human nature the Son of God took upon himself and was clothed
with.” The Rescuer must stand as deep in the mire as the one he
rescues. There was no substitution. Christ waged war with the sin
of his own flesh and he expelled it. His glory was not in saving
others, but in saving himself, and so demonstrating the power of
man through the Holy Spirit to cast out sin from his heart and
life. Irving held that his theory was the only one taught in
Scripture and held from the first by the church.

Nicoll, Life of Christ, 183—“All others, as they grow in holiness,
grow in their sense of sin. But when Christ is forsaken of the
Father, he asks ‘Why?’ well knowing that the reason is not in his
sin. He never makes confession of sin. In his longest prayer, the
preface is an assertion of righteousness: ‘_I glorified thee_’
(_John 17:4_). His last utterance from the cross is a quotation
from _Ps. 31:5_—‘_Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit_’
(_Luke 23:46_), but he does not add, as the Psalm does, ‘_thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth_,’ for he needed no
redemption, being himself the Redeemer.”

(_d_) It makes the active obedience of Christ, and the subjective
purification of his human nature, to be the chief features of his work,
while the Scriptures make his death and passive bearing of penalty the
centre of all, and ever regard him as one who is personally pure and who
vicariously bears the punishment of the guilty.

In Irving’s theory there is no imputation, or representation, or
substitution. His only idea of sacrifice is that sin itself shall
be sacrificed, or annihilated. The many subjective theories of the
atonement show that the offence of the cross has not ceased (_Gal.
5:11_—“_then hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done
away_”). Christ crucified is still a stumbling-block to modern
speculation. Yet it is, as of old, “_the power of God unto
salvation_” (_Rom. 1:16_; _cf._ _1 Cor. 1:23, 24_—“_we preach
Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Gentiles
foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God_”).

As the ocean receives the impurities of the rivers and purges
them, so Irving represented Christ as receiving into himself the
impurities of humanity and purging the race from its sin. Here is
the sense of defilement, but no sense of guilt; subjective
pollution, but no objective condemnation. We take precisely
opposite ground from that of Irving, namely, that Christ had, not
hereditary depravity, but hereditary guilt; that he was under
obligation to suffer for the sins of the race to which he had
historically united himself, and of which he was the creator, the
upholder, and the life. He was “_made to be sin on our behalf_”
(_2 Cor. 5:21_), not in the sense of one defiled, as Irving
thought, but in the sense of one condemned to bear our iniquities
and to suffer their penal consequences. The test of a theory of
the atonement, as the test of a religion, is its power to “cleanse
that red right hand” of Lady Macbeth; in other words, its power to
satisfy the divine justice of which our condemning conscience is
only the reflection. The theory of Irving has no such power. Dr.
E. G. Robinson verged toward Irving’s view, when he claimed that
“Christ took human nature as he found it.”

(_e_) It necessitates the surrender of the doctrine of justification as a
merely declaratory act of God; and requires such a view of the divine
holiness, expressed only through the order of nature, as can be maintained
only upon principles of pantheism.

Thomas Aquinas inquired whether Christ was slain by himself, or by
another. The question suggests a larger one—whether God has
constituted other forces than his own, personal and impersonal, in
the universe, over against which he stands in his transcendence;
or whether all his activity is merged in, and identical with, the
activity of the creature. The theory of a merely subjective
atonement is more consistent with the latter view than the former.
For criticism of Irvingian doctrine, see Studien und Kritiken.
1845:319; 1877:354-374; Princeton Rev., April 1863:207; Christian
Rev., 28:234 sq.; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 219-232.

5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that sin is a violation of the divine honor or majesty,
and, as committed against an infinite being, deserves an infinite
punishment; that the majesty of God requires him to execute punishment,
while the love of God pleads for the sparing of the guilty; that this
conflict of divine attributes is eternally reconciled by the voluntary
sacrifice of the God-man, who bears in virtue of the dignity of his person
the intensively infinite punishment of sin, which must otherwise have been
suffered extensively and eternally by sinners; that this suffering of the
God-man presents to the divine majesty an exact equivalent for the
deserved sufferings of the elect; and that, as the result of this
satisfaction of the divine claims, the elect sinners are pardoned and
regenerated. This view was first broached by Anselm of Canterbury
(1033-1109) as a substitute for the earlier patristic view that Christ’s
death was a ransom paid to Satan, to deliver sinners from his power. It is
held by many Scotch theologians, and, in this country, by the Princeton
School.

The old patristic theory, which the Anselmic view superseded, has
been called the Military theory of the Atonement. Satan, as a
captor in war, had a right to his captives, which could be bought
off only by ransom. It was Justin Martyr who first propounded this
view that Christ paid a ransom to Satan. Gregory of Nyssa added
that Christ’s humanity was the bait with which Satan was attracted
to the hidden hook of Christ’s deity, and so was caught by
artifice. Peter Lombard, Sent., 3:19—“What did the Redeemer to our
captor? He held out to him his cross as a mouse-trap; in it he
set, as a bait, his blood.” Even Luther compares Satan to the
crocodile which swallows the ichneumon, only to find that the
little animal eats its insides out.

These metaphors show this, at least, that no age of the church has
believed in a merely subjective atonement. Nor was this relation
to Satan the only aspect in which the atonement was regarded even
by the early church. So early as the fourth century, we find a
great church Father maintaining that the death of Christ was
required by the truth and goodness of God. See Crippen, History of
Christian Doctrine, 129—“Athanasius (325-373) held that the death
of Christ was the payment of a debt due to God. His argument is
briefly this: God, having threatened death as the punishment of
sin, would be untrue if he did not fulfil his threatening. But it
would be equally unworthy of the divine goodness to permit
rational beings, to whom he had imparted his own Spirit, to incur
this death in consequence of an imposition practiced on them by
the devil. Seeing then that nothing but death could solve this
dilemma, the Word, who could not die, assumed a mortal body, and,
offering his human nature a sacrifice for all, fulfilled the law
by his death.” Gregory Nazianzen (390) “retained the figure of a
ransom, but, clearly perceiving that the analogy was incomplete,
he explained the death of Christ as an expedient to reconcile the
divine attributes.”

But, although many theologians had recognized a relation of
atonement to God, none before Anselm had given any clear account
of the nature of this relation. Anselm’s acute, brief, and
beautiful treatise entitled “Cur Deus Homo” constitutes the
greatest single contribution to the discussion of this doctrine.
He shows that “whatever man owes, he owes to God, not to the
devil.... He who does not yield due honor to God, withholds from
him what is his, and dishonors him; and this is sin.... It is
necessary that either the stolen honor be restored, or that
punishment follow.” Man, because of original sin, cannot make
satisfaction for the dishonor done to God,—“a sinner cannot
justify a sinner.” Neither could an angel make this satisfaction.
None can make it but God. “If then none can make it but God, and
none owes it but man, it must needs be wrought out by God, made
man.” The God-man, to make satisfaction for the sins of all
mankind, must “give to God, of his own, something that is more
valuable than all that is under God.” Such a gift of infinite
value was his death. The reward of his sacrifice turns to the
advantage of man, and thus the justice and love of God are
reconciled.

The foregoing synopsis is mainly taken from Crippen, Hist. Christ.
Doct., 134, 135. The Cur Deus Homo of Anselm is translated in Bib.
Sac., 11:729; 12:52. A synopsis of it is given in Lichtenberger’s
Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses, vol. 1, art.: Anselm. The
treatises on the Atonement by Symington, Candlish, Martin,
Smeaton, in Great Britain, advocate for substance the view of
Anselm, as indeed it was held by Calvin before them. In America,
the theory is represented by Nathanael Emmons, A. Alexander, and
Charles Hodge (Syst. Theol., 2:470-540).

To this theory we make the following objections:

(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, in its representation
of the atonement as satisfying a principle of the divine nature, it
conceives of this principle in too formal and external a manner,—making
the idea of the divine honor or majesty more prominent than that of the
divine holiness, in which the divine honor and majesty are grounded.

The theory has been called the “Criminal theory” of the Atonement,
as the old patristic theory of a ransom paid to Satan has been
called the “Military theory.” It had its origin in a time when
exaggerated ideas prevailed respecting the authority of popes and
emperors, and when dishonor done to their majesty (_crimen læsæ
majestatis_) was the highest offence known to law. See article by
Cramer, in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:7, on Wurzeln des
Anselm’schen Satisfactionsbegriffes.

Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 88, 89—“From the point of view of
Sovereignty, there could be no necessity for atonement. In
Mohammedanism, where sovereignty is the supreme and sole
theological principle, no need is felt for satisfying the divine
justice. God may pardon whom he will, on whatever grounds his
sovereign will may dictate. It therefore constituted a great
advance in Latin theology, as also an evidence of its immeasurable
superiority to Mohammedanism, when Anselm for the first time, in a
clear and emphatic manner, had asserted an inward necessity in the
being of God that his justice should receive satisfaction for the
affront which had been offered to it by human sinfulness.”

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 481—“In the days of feudalism,
men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked
the first and second Persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and
Tenant-in-Chief.” William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, 329, 830—“The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for
example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our forefathers,
that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their Deity seems
positively to have been required by their imagination. They called
the cruelty ‘retributive justice,’ and a God without it would
certainly not have struck them as sovereign enough. But to-day we
abhor the very notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that
arbitrary dealing out of salvation and damnation to selected
individuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could persuade himself that
he had not only a conviction, but a ‘delightful conviction,’ as of
a doctrine ‘exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,’ appears to us,
if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.”

(_b_) In its eagerness to maintain the atoning efficacy of Christ’s
passive obedience, the active obedience, quite as clearly expressed in
Scripture, is insufficiently emphasized and well nigh lost sight of.

Neither Christ’s active obedience alone, nor Christ’s obedient
passion alone, can save us. As we shall see hereafter, in our
examination of the doctrine of Justification, the latter was
needed as the ground upon which our penalty could be remitted; the
former as the ground upon which we might be admitted to the divine
favor. Calvin has reflected the passive element in Anselm’s view,
in the following passages of his Institutes: II, 17:3—“God, to
whom we were hateful through sin, was appeased by the death of his
Son, and was made propitious to us.”... II, 16:7—“It is necessary
to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price
of our redemption. Death held us under its yoke, but he, in our
place, delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us
from it.”... II, 16:2—“Christ interposed and bore what, by the
just judgment of God, was impending over sinners; with his own
blood expiated the sin which rendered them hateful to God; by this
expiation satisfied and duly propitiated the Father; by this
intercession appeased his anger; on this basis founded peace
between God and men; and by this tie secured the divine
benevolence toward them.”

It has been said that Anselm regarded Christ’s death not as a
vicarious punishment, but as a voluntary sacrifice in compensation
for which the guilty were released and justified. So Neander,
Hist. Christ. Dogmas (Bohn), 2:517, understands Anselm to teach
“the necessity of a satisfactio vicaria activa,” and says: “We do
not find in his writings the doctrine of a satisfactio passiva: he
nowhere says that Christ had endured the punishment of men.”
Shedd, Hist. Christ. Doctrine, 2:282, thinks this a
misunderstanding of Anselm. The Encyclopædia Britannica takes the
view of Shedd, when it speaks of Christ’s sufferings as penalty:
“The justice of man demands satisfaction; and as an insult to
infinite honor is itself infinite, the satisfaction must be
infinite, _i. e._, it must outweigh all that is not God. Such a
penalty can only be paid by God himself, and, as a penalty for
man, must be paid under the form of man. Satisfaction is only
possible through the God-man. Now this God-man, as sinless, is
exempt from the punishment of sin; his passion is therefore
voluntary, not given as due. The merit of it is therefore
infinite; God’s justice is thus appeased, and his mercy may extend
to man.” The truth then appears to be that Anselm held Christ’s
obedience to be passive, in that he satisfied God’s justice by
enduring punishment which the sinner deserved; but that he held
this same obedience of Christ to be active, in that he endured
this penalty voluntarily, when there was no obligation upon him so
to do.

Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:431, 461, 462—“Christ not only
suffered the penalty, but obeyed the precept, of the law. In this
case law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only
suffers the penalty, but does not obey the precept, the law is
defrauded of a part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed, if
only its penalty is endured.... Consequently, a sinner can never
completely and exhaustively satisfy the divine law, however much
or long he may suffer, because he cannot at one and the same time
endure the penalty and obey the precept. He owes ‘_ten thousand
talents_’ and has ‘_not wherewith to pay_’ (_Mat. 18:24, 25_), But
Christ did both, and therefore he ‘_magnified the law and made it
honorable_’ (_Is. 42:21_), in an infinitely higher degree than the
whole human family would have done, had they all personally
suffered for their sins.” _Cf._ Edwards, Works, 1:406.

(_c_) It allows disproportionate weight to those passages of Scripture
which represent the atonement under commercial analogies, as the payment
of a debt or ransom, to the exclusion of those which describe it as an
ethical fact, whose value is to be estimated not quantitatively, but
qualitatively.

Milton, Paradise Lost, 3:209-212—“Die he, or justice must, unless
for him Some other, able and as willing, pay The rigid
satisfaction, death for death.” The main text relied upon by the
advocates of the Commercial theory is _Mat. 20:28_—“_give his life
a ransom for many._” Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,
1:257—“The work of Christ, as Anselm construed it, was in fact
nothing else than the prototype of the meritorious performances
and satisfactions of the ecclesiastical saints, and was therefore,
from the point of view of the mediæval church, thought out quite
logically. All the more remarkable is it that the churches of the
Reformation could be satisfied with this theory, notwithstanding
that it stood in complete contradiction to their deeper moral
consciousness. If, according to Protestant principles generally,
there are no supererogatory meritorious works, then one would
suppose that such cannot be accepted even in the case of Jesus.”

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 258—“The Anselmic theory was
rejected by Abelard for grounding the atonement in justice instead
of benevolence, and for taking insufficient account of the power
of Christ’s sufferings and death in procuring a subjective change
in man.” Encyc. Brit., 2:93 (art.: Anselm)—“This theory has
exercised immense influence on the form of church doctrine. It is
certainly an advance on the older patristic theory, in so far as
it substitutes for a contest between God and Satan, a contest
between the goodness and justice of God; but it puts the whole
relation on a merely legal footing, gives it no ethical bearing,
and neglects altogether the consciousness of the individual to be
redeemed. In this respect it contrasts unfavorably with the later
theory of Abelard.”

(_d_) It represents the atonement as having reference only to the elect,
and ignores the Scripture declarations that Christ died for all.

Anselm, like Augustine, limited the atonement to the elect. Yet
Leo the Great, in 461, had affirmed that “so precious is the
shedding of Christ’s blood for the unjust, that if the whole
universe of captives would believe in the Redeemer, no chain of
the devil could hold them” (Crippen, 132). Bishop Gailor, of the
Episcopal Church, heard General Booth at Memphis say in 1903:
“Friends, Jesus shed his blood to pay the price, and he bought
from God enough salvation to go round.” The Bishop says: “I felt
that his view of salvation was different from mine. Yet such
teaching, partial as it is, lifts men by the thousand from the
mire and vice of sin into the power and purity of a new life in
Jesus Christ.”

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 221—“Anselm does not clearly
connect the death of Christ with the punishment of sin, since he
makes it a supererogatory work voluntarily done, in consequence of
which it is ‘fitting’ that forgiveness should be bestowed on
sinners.... Yet his theory served to hand down to later
theologians the great idea of the objective atonement.”

(_e_) It is defective in holding to a merely external transfer of the
merit of Christ’s work, while it does not clearly state the internal
ground of that transfer, in the union of the believer with Christ.

This needed supplement, namely, the doctrine of the Union of the
Believer with Christ, was furnished by Thomas Aquinas, Summa, pars
3, quæs. 8. The Anselmic theory is Romanist in its tendency, as
the theory next to be mentioned is Protestant in its tendency. P.
S. Moxom asserts that salvation is not by substitution, but by
incorporation. We prefer to say that salvation is by substitution,
but that the substitution is by incorporation. Incorporation
involves substitution, and another’s pain inures to my account.
Christ being incorporate with humanity, all the exposures and
liabilities of humanity fell upon him. Simon, Reconciliation by
Incarnation, is an attempt to unite the two elements of the
doctrine.

Lidgett, Spir. Prin. of Atonement, 182-189—“As Anselm represents
it, Christ’s death is not ours in any such sense that we can enter
into it. Bushnell justly charges that it leaves no moral dynamic
in the Cross.” For criticism of Anselm, see John Caird, Fund.
Ideas of Christianity, 2:172-193: Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, III, 2:230-241; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:70 sq.; Baur,
Dogmengeschichte, 2:416 _sq._; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2:273-286;
Dale, Atonement, 279-292; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture,
196-199; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 176-178.

6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.

In propounding what we conceive to be the true theory of the atonement, it
seems desirable to divide our treatment into two parts. No theory can be
satisfactory which does not furnish a solution of the two problems: 1.
What did the atonement accomplish? or, in other words, what was the object
of Christ’s death? The answer to this question must be a description of
the atonement in its relation to holiness in God. 2. What were the means
used? or, in other words, how could Christ justly die? The answer to this
question must be a description of the atonement as arising from Christ’s
relation to humanity. We take up these two parts of the subject in order.

Edwards, Works, 1:609, says that two things make Christ’s
sufferings a satisfaction for human guilt: (1) their equality or
equivalence to the punishment that the sinner deserves; (2) the
union between him and them, or the propriety of his being
accepted, in suffering, as the representative of the sinner.
Christ bore God’s wrath: (1) by the sight of sin and punishment;
(2) by enduring the effects of wrath ordered by God. See also
Edwards, Sermon on the Satisfaction of Christ. These statements of
Edwards suggest the two points of view from which we regard the
atonement; but they come short of the Scriptural declarations, in
that they do not distinctly assert Christ’s endurance of penalty
itself. Thus they leave the way open for the New School theories
of the atonement, propounded by the successors of Edwards.

Adolphe Monod said well: “Save first the holy law of my God,—after
that you shall save me.” Edwards felt the first of these needs,
for he says, in his Mysteries of Scripture, Works, 3:542—“The
necessity of Christ’s satisfaction to divine justice is, as it
were, the centre and hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation.
Other doctrines are comparatively of little importance, except as
they have respect to this.” And in his Work of Redemption, Works,
1:412—“Christ was born to the end that he might die; and therefore
he did, as it were, begin to die as soon as he was born.” See
_John 12:32_—“_And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto myself. But this he said, signifying by what manner
of death he should die._” Christ was “_lifted up_”: 1. as a
propitiation to the holiness of God, which makes suffering to
follow sin, so affording the only ground for pardon without and
peace within; 2. as a power to purify the hearts and lives of men,
Jesus being as “_the serpent lifted up in the wilderness_” (_John
3:14_), and we overcoming “_because of the blood of the Lamb_”
(_Rev. 12:11_).

_First_,—the Atonement as related to Holiness in God.

The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the atonement is grounded
in the holiness of God, of which conscience in man is a finite reflection.
There is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which demands that sin
shall be punished. Aside from its results, sin is essentially
ill-deserving. As we who are made in God’s image mark our growth in purity
by the increasing quickness with which we detect impurity, and the
increasing hatred which we feel toward it, so infinite purity is a
consuming fire to all iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our
natures that not only others’ wickedness, but our own wickedness, be
visited with punishment, and a keen conscience cannot rest till it has
made satisfaction to justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical
demand of God’s nature that penalty follow sin.

The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates
and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens,
the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing
the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state,
had underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human
nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last
Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the
hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of
life everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to
have redemption By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The
world’s Ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.” Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That
dread King took our state upon him, To free us from his Father’s
wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields, Over
whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred
years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter Cross.”
Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were forfeit
once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the
remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him that
died for all!” All’s Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers,
whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from
the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the
Ethical theory of the Atonement in its relation to God’s holiness,
in Denney, Studies in Theology, 100-124.

Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God’s being against moral
evil—the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and
would-be destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all passion, and is
consistent with infinite benevolence. It is a demand that cannot be
evaded, since the holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The
atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical demand of the divine
nature, by the substitution of Christ’s penal sufferings for the
punishment of the guilty.

John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse
deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi
satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and
sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself
[_i. e._, for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and
by himself [by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles’s Emblems: “O
groundless deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set
the offender free!”

Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the Holy
Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of
the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people,
became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I
feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my
mind a deep concern for the honor of God’s name and the integrity
of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my
conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came
the question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had
been so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind
one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who
would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust
rebel?”

This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above and beyond the powers
of law. It is an operation of grace. Grace, however, does not violate or
suspend law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The righteousness
of law is maintained, in that the source of all law, the judge and
punisher, himself voluntarily submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in
the human nature that has sinned.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man condemns
and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both priest and
sacrificial victim (_Heb. 9:12_). He is ‘_full of
grace_’—forgiving grace—but he is ‘_full of truth_’ also, and so
‘_the only-begotten from the Father_’ (_John 1:14_). Not
forgiveness that ignores sin, not justice that has no mercy. He
forgave the sinner, because he bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to
some modern theologians who have returned to the old doctrine but
who have said that the basis of the atonement is, not the
juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of
propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the highest
ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take this
away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and
unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity.
Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the
idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for
the sake of the ethical consciousness.

“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which is
not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin....
Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took
upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the
consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on
the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of
man he bore all that which man had deserved, and thereby has man
escaped the final eternal punishment and has become a child of
God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion upon the
related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything which
faith recognizes and knows.”

Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of the divine nature that
sin be punished if the offender is to go free. The interests of the divine
government are secured as a first subordinate result of this satisfaction
to God himself, of whose nature the government is an expression; while, as
a second subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of human
nature,—on the one hand the need of an objective satisfaction to its
ethical demand of punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a
manifestation of divine love and mercy that will affect the heart and move
it to repentance.

The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is
_Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through
faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the
passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of
God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present
season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him
that hath faith is Jesus._” Or, somewhat more freely translated,
the passage would read:—“_whom God hath set forth in his blood as
a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith, to show forth his
righteousness on account of the pretermission of past offenses in
the forbearance of God; to declare his righteousness in the time
now present, so that he may be just and yet may justify him who
believeth in Jesus_.”

EXPOSITION OF ROM. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded
statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the
“_righteousness of God_” (= the righteousness which God provides
and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in _1:17_, but
which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in
_1:18-3:20_, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation,
and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that
of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer’s comments upon this
passage.

“_Verse 25._ ‘_God has set forth Christ as an effectual
propitiatory offering, through faith, by means of his blood_,’ _i.
e._, in that he caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι
belongs to προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting
forth in his blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘_for
the display of his_ [judicial and punitive] _righteousness_,’
which received its satisfaction in the death of Christ as a
propitiatory offering, and was thereby practically demonstrated
and exhibited. ‘_On account of the passing-by of sins that had
previously taken place_,’ _i. e._, because he had allowed the
pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby his
righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had come to
need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not
acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon
and punishment. ‘_In virtue of the forbearance of God_’ expresses
the motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ’s sacrifice, God’s
administration was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement
is God’s answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.

“_Verse 26._ εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but
presents the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the
whole affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God’s
_being just_, and secondly, his _appearing just_ in consequence of
this. _Justus et justificans_, instead of _justus et condemnans_,
this is the _summum paradoxon evangelicum_. Of this revelation of
righteousness, not through condemnation, but through atonement,
grace is the determining ground.”

We repeat what was said on pages 719, 720, with regard to the
teaching of the passage, namely, that it shows: (1) that Christ’s
death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main
effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which
demands the atonement in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the
satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s
justifying the believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately
that the atonement is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here
mainly as a necessity to God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may
_appear_ righteous; but behind the appearance lies the reality;
the main object of Christ’s suffering is that God may _be_
righteous, while he pardons the believing sinner; in other words,
the ground of the atonement is something internal to God himself.
See _Heb. 2:10_—it “_became_” God = it was morally fitting in God,
to make Christ suffer; _cf._ _Zech. 6:8_—“_they that go toward the
north country have quieted my spirit in the north country_”—the
judgments inflicted on Babylon have satisfied my justice.

Charnock: “He who once ‘_quenched the violence of fire_’ for those
Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God’s anger
against the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The
same God who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his
holiness must punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in
virtue of his mercy himself bears the punishment of human sin.
Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator
between God and man, but between the just God and the merciful
God”—_cf._ _Ps. 85:10_—“_Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other,_” “Conscience
demands vicariousness, for conscience declares that a gratuitous
pardon would not be just”; see Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.

Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement
1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord’s endurance
of death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is
of vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely,
obedience.... God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives
atonement, yet requires it. ‘_Thanks be to God for his unspeakable
gift_’ (_2 Cor. 9:15_).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for
substance)—“As in prayer we ask God to energize us and enable us
to obey his law, and he answers by entering our hearts and obeying
in us and for us: as we pray for strength in affliction, and find
him helping us by putting his Spirit into us, and suffering in us
and for us; so in atonement, Christ, the manifested God, obeys and
suffers in our stead. Even the moral theory implies substitution
also. God in us obeys his own law and bears the sorrows that sin
has caused. Why can he not, in human nature, also endure the
penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot be consistently
denied by any who believe in divine help granted in answer to
prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of prayer
stand or fall together.”

See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324,
Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463;
Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards’s Works,
4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine
Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,
2:27-114; Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und
Kritiken, 1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog,
Encyclopädie, art.: Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and
8:213; Macdonnell, Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths,
114-138; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac.,
20:332-339; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev.,
1882:263-286; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct.,
4:107-124); Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.

_Secondly_,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in Christ.

The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ stands in such
relation to humanity, that what God’s holiness demands Christ is under
obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully,
in virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of justice is
satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what Christ has done in his behalf
is saved.

Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question
before us: “What must be Christ’s relation to men, in order to
make it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the
form of the question, so that it should read: “What must be
Christ’s relation to men, in order to make it not only possible,
but just and necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale
replies, for substance, that Christ must have had an original and
central relation to the human race and to every member of it; see
Denney, Death of Christ, 318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism,
of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ, we have shown that
Christ, as Logos, as the immanent God, is the Life of humanity,
laden with responsibility for human sin, while yet he personally
knows no sin. Of this race-responsibility and race-guilt which
Christ assumed, and for which he suffered so soon as man had
sinned, Christ’s obedience and suffering in the flesh were the
visible reflection and revelation. Only in Christ’s organic union
with the race can we find the vital relation which will make his
vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only when we regard
Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine nature, can
we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the Cross could
suffice to save the millions of mankind.

Dr. E. Y. Mullins has set forth the doctrine of the Atonement in
five propositions: “1. In order to atonement Christ became vitally
united to the human race. It was only by assuming the nature of
those he would redeem that he could break the power of their
captor.... The human race may be likened to many sparrows who had
been caught in the snare of the fowler, and were hopelessly
struggling against their fate. A great eagle swoops down from the
sky, becomes entangled with the sparrows in the net, and then
spreading his mighty wings he soars upward bearing the snare and
captives and breaking its meshes he delivers himself and them....
Christ the fountain head of life imparting his own vitality to the
redeemed, and causing them to share in the experiences of
Gethsemane and Calvary, breaking thus for them the power of sin
and death—this is the atonement, by virtue of which sin is put
away and man is united to God.”

Dr. Mullins properly regards this view of atonement as too narrow,
inasmuch as it disregards the differences between Christ and men
arising from his sinlessness and his deity. He adds therefore that
“2. Christ became the substitute for sinners; 3. became the
representative of men before God; 4. gained power over human
hearts to win them from sin and reconcile them to God; and 5.
became a propitiation and satisfaction, rendering the remission of
sins consistent with the divine holiness.” If Christ’s union with
the race be one which begins with creation and antedates the Fall,
all of the later points in the above scheme are only natural
correlates and consequences of the first,—substitution,
representation, reconciliation, propitiation, satisfaction, are
only different aspects of the work which Christ does for us, by
virtue of the fact that he is the immanent God, the Life of
humanity, priest and victim, condemning and condemned, atoning and
atoned.

We have seen how God can justly demand satisfaction; we now show how
Christ can justly make it; or, in other words, how the innocent can justly
suffer for the guilty. The solution of the problem lies in Christ’s union
with humanity. The first result of that union is obligation to suffer for
men; since, being one with the race, Christ had a share in the
responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God. In him
humanity was created; at every stage of its existence humanity was upheld
by his power; as the immanent God he was the life of the race and of every
member of it. Christ’s sharing of man’s life justly and inevitably
subjected him to man’s exposures and liabilities, and especially to God’s
condemnation on account of sin.

In the seventh chapter of Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes
makes the Reverend Mr. Honeywood lay aside an old sermon on Human
Nature, and write one on The Obligations of an infinite Creator to
a finite Creature. A. J. F. Behrends grounded our Lord’s
representative relation not in his human nature but in his divine
nature. “He is our representative not because he was in the loins
of Adam, but because we, Adam included, were in his loins.
Personal created existence is grounded in the Logos, so that God
must deal with him as well as with every individual sinner, and
sin and guilt and punishment must smite the Logos as well as the
sinner, and that, whether the sinner is saved or not. This is not,
as is often charged, a denial of grace or of freedom in grace, for
it is no denial of freedom or grace to show that they are
eternally rational and conformable to eternal law. In the ideal
sphere, necessity and freedom, law and grace, coalesce.” J. C. C.
Clarke, Man and his Divine Father, 387—“Vicarious atonement does
not consist in any single act.... No one act embraces it all, and
no one definition can compass it.” In this sense we may adopt the
words of Forsyth: “In the atonement the Holy Father dealt with a
world’s sin on (not _in_) a world-soul.”

G. B. Foster, on _Mat. 26:53, 54_—“_Thinkest thou that I cannot
beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve
legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be?_” “On this ‘_must be_’ the Scripture is
based, not this ‘_must be_’ on the Scripture. The ‘_must be_’ was
the ethical demand of his connection with the race. It would have
been immoral for him to break away from the organism. The law of
the organism is: From each according to ability; to each according
to need. David in song, Aristotle in logic, Darwin in science, are
under obligation to contribute to the organism the talent they
have. Shall they be under obligation, and Jesus go scot-free? But
Jesus can contribute atonement, and because he can, he must.
Moreover, he is a member, not only of the whole, but of each
part,—_Rom. 12:5_—‘_members one of another._’ As membership of the
whole makes him liable for the sin of the whole, so his being a
member of the part makes him liable for the sin of that part.”

Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 483, 484—“There is
a sense in which the Patripassian theory is right; the Father did
suffer; though it was not as the Son that he suffered, but in
modes distinct and different.... Through his pity the misery of
man became his sorrow.... There is a disclosure of his suffering
in the surrender of the Son. This surrender represented the
sacrifice and passion of the whole Godhead. Here degree and
proportion are out of place; were it not, we might say that the
Father suffered more in giving than the Son in being given. He who
gave to duty had not the reward of him who rejoiced to do it....
One member of the Trinity could not suffer without all
suffering.... The visible sacrifice was that of the Son; the
invisible sacrifice was that of the Father.” The Andover Theory,
represented in Progressive Orthodoxy, 43-53, affirms not only the
Moral Influence of the Atonement, but also that the whole race of
mankind is naturally in Christ and was therefore punished in and
by his suffering and death; quoted in Hovey, Manual of Christian
Theology, 269; see Hovey’s own view, 270-276, though he does not
seem to recognize the atonement as existing before the
incarnation.

Christ’s share in the responsibility of the race to the law and justice of
God was not destroyed by his incarnation, nor by his purification in the
womb of the virgin. In virtue of the organic unity of the race, each
member of the race since Adam has been born into the same state into which
Adam fell. The consequences of Adam’s sin, both to himself and to his
posterity, are: (1) depravity, or the corruption of human nature; (2)
guilt, or obligation to make satisfaction for sin to the divine holiness;
(3) penalty, or actual endurance of loss or suffering visited by that
holiness upon the guilty.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Christ had taken upon
him, as the living expression of himself, a nature which was
weighed down, not merely by present incapacities, but by present
incapacities as part of the judicial necessary result of accepted
and inherent sinfulness. Human nature was not only disabled but
guilty, and the disabilities were themselves a consequence and
aspect of the guilt”; see review of Moberly by Rashdall, in Jour.
Theol. Studies, 3:198-211. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement,
166-168, criticizes Dr. Dale for neglecting the fatherly purpose
of the Atonement to serve the moral training of the
child—punishment marking ill-desert in order to bring this
ill-desert to the consciousness of the offender,—and for
neglecting also the positive assertion in the atonement that the
law is holy and just and good—something more than the negative
expression of sin’s ill-desert. See especially Lidgett’s chapter
on the relation of our Lord to the human race, 351-378, in which
he grounds the atonement in the solidarity of mankind, its organic
union with the Son of God, and Christ’s immanence in humanity.

Bowne, The Atonement, 101—“Something like this work of grace was a
moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that was
taken when our human race was launched with its fearful
possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under
infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections
upon his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing only
make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive of God
as sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not
love at all, but only a reflex of our selfishness and vulgarity.
So long as we conceive him as bestowing upon us out of his
infinite fulness but at no real cost to himself, he sinks before
the moral heroes of the race. There is ever a higher thought
possible, until we see God taking the world upon his heart,
entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming the
supreme burdenbearer and leader in all self-sacrifice. Then only
are the possibilities of grace and love and moral heroism and
condescension filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the
work of Christ himself, so far as it was an historical event, must
be viewed, not merely as a piece of history, but also as a
manifestation of that Cross which was hidden in the divine love
from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the
existence of the human world at all.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:90, 91—“Conceive of the
ideal of moral perfection incarnate in a human personality, and at
the same time one who loves us with a love so absolute that he
identifies himself with us and makes our good and evil his
own—bring together these elements in a living, conscious human
spirit, and you have in it a capacity of shame and anguish, a
possibility of bearing the burden of human guilt and wretchedness,
which lost and guilty humanity can never bear for itself.”

If Christ had been born into the world by ordinary generation, he too
would have had depravity, guilt, penalty. But he was not so born. In the
womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged from its
depravity. But this purging away of depravity did not take away guilt, or
penalty. There was still left the just exposure to the penalty of violated
law. Although Christ’s nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet
remained. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he
need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connection with the
race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin,
once possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound
to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God’s displeasure against the race
fell on him, when once he became a member of the race.

Because Christ is essential humanity, the universal man, the life
of the race, he is the central brain to which and through which
all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through
which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your
friend across the town without first ringing up the central
office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring
Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only,
have I sinned_” (_Ps. 51:4_). Because of his central and
all-inclusive humanity, he must bear in his own person all the
burdens of humanity, and must be “_the Lamb of God, that_” taketh,
and so “_taketh away, the sin of the world_” (_John 1:29_). Simms
Reeves, the great English tenor, said that the passion-music was
too much for him; he was found completely overcome after singing
the prophet’s words in _Lam. 1:12_—“_Is it nothing to you, all ye
that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my
sorrow, which is brought upon me, Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger._”

Father Damien gave his life in ministry to the lepers’ colony of
the Hawaiian Islands. Though free from the disease when he
entered, he was at last himself stricken with the leprosy, and
then wrote: “I must now stay with my own people.” Once a leper,
there was no release. When Christ once joined himself to humanity,
all the exposures and liabilities of humanity fell upon him.
Through himself personally without sin, he was made sin for us.
Christ inherited guilt and penalty. _Heb. 2:14, 15_—“_Since then
the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in
like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring
to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their
life-time subject to bondage._”

Only God can forgive sin, because only God can feel it in its true
heinousness and rate it at its true worth. Christ could forgive
sin because he added to the divine feeling with regard to sin the
anguish of a pure humanity on account of it. Shelley, Julian and
Maddolo: “Me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear, As
water-drops the sandy fountain-stone; Me, who am as a nerve o’er
which do creep The Else unfelt oppressions of the earth.” S. W.
Culver: “We cannot be saved, as we are taught geometry, by lecture
and diagram. No person ever yet saved another from drowning by
standing coolly by and telling him the importance of rising to the
surface and the necessity of respiration. No, he must plunge into
the destructive element, and take upon himself the very condition
of the drowning man, and by the exertion of his own strength, by
the vigor of his own life, save him from the impending death. When
your child is encompassed by the flames that consume your
dwelling, you will not save him by calling to him from without.
You must make your way through the devouring flame, till you come
personally into the very conditions of his peril and danger, and,
thence returning, bear him forth to freedom and safety.”

Notice, however, that this guilt which Christ took upon himself by his
union with humanity was: (1) not the guilt of personal sin—such guilt as
belongs to every adult member of the race; (2) not even the guilt of
inherited depravity—such guilt as belongs to infants, and to those who
have not come to moral consciousness; but (3) solely the guilt of Adam’s
sin, which belongs, prior to personal transgression, and apart from
inherited depravity, to every member of the race who has derived his life
from Adam. This original sin and inherited guilt, but without the
depravity that ordinarily accompanies them, Christ takes, and so takes
away. He can justly bear penalty, because he inherits guilt. And since
this guilt is not his personal guilt, but the guilt of that one sin in
which “all sinned”—the guilt of the common transgression of the race in
Adam, the guilt of the root-sin from which all other sins have sprung—he
who is personally pure can vicariously bear the penalty due to the sin of
all.

Christ was conscious of innocence in his personal relations, but
not in his race relations. He gathered into himself all the
penalties of humanity, as Winkelried gathered into his own bosom
at Sempach the pikes of the Austrians and so made a way for the
victorious Swiss. Christ took to himself the shame of humanity, as
the mother takes upon her the daughter’s shame, repenting of it
and suffering on account of it. But this could not be in the case
of Christ unless there had been a tie uniting him to men far more
vital, organic, and profound than that which unites mother and
daughter. Christ is naturally the life of all men, before he
becomes spiritually the life of true believers. Matheson, Spir.
Devel. of St. Paul, 197-215, 244, speaks of Christ’s secular
priesthood, of an outer as well as an inner membership in the body
of Christ. He is sacrificial head of the world as well as
sacrificial head of the church. In Paul’s latest letters, he
declares of Christ that he is “_the Savior of all men, specially
of them that believe_” (_1 Tim. 4:10_). There is a grace that
“_hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men_” (_Tit. 2:11_). He
“_gave gifts unto men_” (_Eph. 4:8_), “_Yea, among the rebellious
also, that Jehovah God might dwell with them_” (_Ps. 68:18_).
“_Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected_”
(_1 Tim. 4:4_).

Royce, World and Individual, 2:408—“Our sorrows are identically
God’s own sorrows.... I sorrow, but the sorrow is not only mine.
This same sorrow, just as it is for me, is God’s sorrow.... The
divine fulfilment can be won only through the sorrows of time....
Unless God knows sorrow, he knows not the highest good, which
consists in the overcoming of sorrow.” Godet, in The Atonement,
331-351—“Jesus condemned sin as God condemned it. When he felt
forsaken on the Cross, he performed that act by which the offender
himself condemns his sin, and by that condemnation, so far as it
depends on himself, makes it to disappear. There is but one
conscience in all moral beings. This echo in Christ of God’s
judgment against sin was to re-echo in all other human
consciences. This has transformed God’s love of compassion into a
love of satisfaction. Holiness joins suffering to sin. But the
element of reparation in the Cross was not in the suffering but in
the submission. The child who revolts against its punishment has
made no reparation at all. We appropriate Christ’s work when we by
faith ourselves condemn sin and accept him.”

If it be asked whether this is not simply a suffering for his own sin, or
rather for his own share of the sin of the race, we reply that his own
share in the sin of the race is not the sole reason why he suffers; it
furnishes only the subjective reason and ground for the proper laying upon
him of the sin of all. Christ’s union with the race in his incarnation is
only the outward and visible expression of a prior union with the race
which began when he created the race. As “in him were all things created,”
and as “in him all things consist,” or hold together (Col. 1:16, 17), it
follows that he who is the life of humanity must, though personally pure,
be involved in responsibility for all human sin, and “it was necessary
that the Christ should suffer” (Acts 17:3). This suffering was an enduring
of the reaction of the divine holiness against sin and so was a bearing of
penalty (Is. 53:6; Gal. 3:13), but it was also the voluntary execution of
a plan that antedated creation (Phil. 2:6, 7), and Christ’s sacrifice in
time showed what had been in the heart of God from eternity (Heb. 9:14;
Rev. 13:8).

Our treatment is intended to meet the chief modern objection to
the atonement. Greg, Creed of Christendom, 2:222, speaks of “the
strangely inconsistent doctrine that God is so _just_ that he
could not let sin go unpunished, yet so _unjust_ that he could
punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox
dialectics to explain how the divine justice can be _impugned_ by
pardoning the guilty, and yet _vindicated_ by punishing the
innocent” (quoted in Lias, Atonement, 16). In order to meet this
difficulty, the following accounts of Christ’s identification with
humanity have been given:

1. That of Isaac Watts (see Bib. Sac., 1875:421). This holds that
the humanity of Christ, both in body and soul, preëxisted before
the incarnation, and was manifested to the patriarchs. We reply
that Christ’s human nature is declared to be derived from the
Virgin.

2. That of R. W. Dale (Atonement, 265-440). This holds that Christ
is responsible for human sin because, as the Upholder and Life of
all, he is naturally one with all men, and is spiritually one with
all believers (_Acts 17:28_—“_in him we live, and move, and have
our being_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_in him all things consist_”; _John
14:20_—“_I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you_”). If
Christ’s bearing our sins, however, is to be explained by the
union of the believer with Christ, the effect is made to explain
the cause, and Christ could have died only for the elect (see a
review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. Rev., Apr., 1876:221-225). The
union of Christ with the race by creation—a union which recognizes
Christ’s purity and man’s sin—still remains as a most valuable
element of truth in the theory of Dr. Dale.

3. That of Edward Irving. Christ has a corrupted nature, an inborn
infirmity and depravity, which he gradually overcomes. But the
Scriptures, on the contrary, assert his holiness and separateness
from sinners. (See references, on pages 744-747.)

4. That of John Miller, Theology, 114-128; also in his chapter:
Was Christ in Adam? in Questions Awakened by the Bible. Christ, as
to his human nature, although created pure, was yet, as one of
Adam’s posterity, conceived of as a sinner in Adam. To him
attached “the guilt of the act in which all men stood together in
a federal relation.... He was decreed to be guilty for the sins of
all mankind.” Although there is a truth contained in this
statement, it is vitiated by Miller’s federalism and creatianism.
Arbitrary imputation and legal fiction do not help us here. We
need such an actual union of Christ with humanity, and such a
derivation of the substance of his being, by natural generation
from Adam, as will make him not simply the constructive heir, but
the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. We come, therefore, to
what we regard as the true view, namely:

5. That the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was
derived from Adam, through Mary his mother; so that Christ, so far
as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and
had the same race-responsibility with ourselves. As Adam’s
descendant, he was responsible for Adam’s sin, like every other
member of the race; the chief difference being, that while we
inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy
Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity, but only the guilt.
Christ took to himself, not sin (depravity), but the consequences
of sin. In him there was abolition of sin, without abolition of
obligation to suffer for sin; while in the believer, there is
abolition of obligation to suffer, without abolition of sin
itself.

The justice of Christ’s sufferings has been imperfectly
illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business
firm to pay debts of the firm which he did not personally
contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of
his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume
the debts of the province which it purchases (Wm. Ashmore). There
have been men who have spent the strength of a lifetime in
clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father, long since
deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family, which
morally, if not legally, made their father’s liabilities their
own. So, it is said, Christ recognized the organic unity of the
race, and saw that, having become one of that sinning race, he had
involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of
death, the great penalty of sin.

The fault of all the analogies just mentioned is that they are
purely commercial. A transference of pecuniary obligation is
easier to understand than a transference of criminal liability. I
cannot justly bear another’s penalty, unless I can in some way
share his guilt. The theory we advocate shows how such a sharing
of our guilt on the part of Christ was possible. All believers in
substitution hold that Christ bore our guilt: “My soul looks back
to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed
tree, And hopes her guilt was there.” But we claim that, by virtue
of Christ’s union with humanity, that guilt was not only an
imputed, but also an imparted, guilt.

With Christ’s obligation to suffer, there were connected two
other, though minor, results of his assumption of humanity: first,
the longing to suffer; and secondly, the inevitableness of his
suffering. He felt the longing to suffer which perfect love to God
must feel, in view of the demands upon the race, of that holiness
of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which
perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing
the penalty of man’s sin was the only way to save him. Hence we
see Christ pressing forward to the cross with such majestic
determination that the disciples were amazed and afraid (_Mark
10:32_). Hence we hear him saying: “_With desire have I desired to
eat this passover_” (_Luke 23:15_); “_I have a baptism to be
baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!_”
(_Luke 12:50_).

Here is the truth in Campbell’s theory of the atonement. Christ is
the great Penitent before God, making confession of the sin of the
race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But
the view we present is a larger and completer one than that of
Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation
obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell’s view does not, and
recognizes the penal nature of Christ’s sufferings, which
Campbell’s view denies. Lias, Atonement, 79—“The head of a clan,
himself intensely loyal to his king, finds that his clan have been
involved in rebellion. The more intense and perfect his loyalty,
the more thorough his nobleness of heart and affection for his
people, the more inexcusable and flagrant the rebellion of those
for whom he pleads,—the more acute would be his agony, as their
representative and head. Nothing would be more true to human
nature, in the best sense of those words, than that the conflict
between loyalty to his king and affection for his vassals should
induce him to offer his life for theirs, to ask that the
punishment they deserved should be inflicted on him.”

The second minor consequence of Christ’s assumption of humanity
was, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering; in
other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the
inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with
the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily
involved an actual suffering, of an intenser kind than we can
conceive. Sin is self-isolating, but love and righteousness have
in them the instinct of human unity. In Christ all the nerves and
sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of
the race. When life returns to a frozen limb, there is pain. So
Christ, as the only sensitive member of a benumbed and stupefied
humanity, felt all the pangs of shame and suffering which
rightfully belonged to sinners; but which they could not feel,
simply because of the depth of their depravity. Because Christ was
pure, yet had united himself to a sinful and guilty race,
therefore “_it must needs be that Christ should suffer_” (A. V.)
or, “_it behooved the Christ to suffer_” (Rev. Vers., _Acts
17:3_); see also _John 3:14_—“_so must the Son of man be lifted
up_”—“The Incarnation, under the actual circumstances of humanity,
carried with it the necessity of the Passion” (Westcott, in Bib.
Com., _in loco_).

Compare John Woolman’s Journal, 4, 5—“O Lord, my God, the amazing
horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all
over, and I saw no way to go forth; I felt the depth and extent of
the misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine
harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed
down under it; I lifted up my head, I stretched out my arm, but
there was none to help me; I looked round about, and was amazed.
In the depths of misery, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and
that I had called thee Father.” He had vision of a “dull, gloomy
mass,” darkening half the heavens, and he was told that it was
“human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live; and
he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider
himself a distinct and separate being.”

This suffering in and with the sins of men, which Dr. Bushnell
emphasized so strongly, though it is not, as he thought, the
principal element, is notwithstanding an indispensable element in
the atonement of Christ. Suffering in and with the sinner is one
way, though not the only way, in which Christ is enabled to bear
the wrath of God which constitutes the real penalty of sin.

EXPOSITION OF 2 COR. 5:21.—It remains for us to adduce the
Scriptural proof of this natural assumption of human guilt by
Christ. We find it in _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made
to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of
God in him._” “_Righteousness_” here cannot mean subjective
purity, for then “_made to be sin_” would mean that God made
Christ to be subjectively depraved. As Christ was not made
_unholy_, the meaning cannot be that we are made _holy_ persons in
him. Meyer calls attention to this parallel between
“_righteousness_” and “_sin_”:—“_That we might become the
righteousness of God in him_” = that we might become justified
persons. Correspondingly, “_made to be sin on our behalf_” must =
made to be a condemned person. “_Him who knew no sin_” = Christ
had no experience of sin—this was the necessary postulate of his
work of atonement. “_Made sin for us_,” therefore, is the abstract
for the concrete, and = made a sinner, in the sense that the
penalty of sin fell upon him. So Meyer, for substance.

We must, however, regard this interpretation of Meyer’s as coming
short of the full meaning of the apostle. As justification is not
simply remission of _actual_ punishment, but is also deliverance
from the _obligation_ to suffer punishment,—in other words, as
“_righteousness_” in the text = persons delivered from the _guilt_
as well as from the _penalty_ of sin,—so the contrasted term
“_sin_,” in the text,—a person not only _actually_ punished, but
also under _obligation_ to suffer punishment;—in other words,
Christ is “_made sin_,” not only in the sense of being put under
_penalty_, but also in the sense of being put under _guilt_.
(_Cf._ Symington, Atonement, 17.)

In a note to the last edition of Meyer, this is substantially
granted. “It is to be noted,” he says, “that ἁμαρτίαν, like κατάρα
in _Gal. 3:13_, necessarily includes in itself the notion of
guilt.” Meyer adds, however: “The guilt of which Christ appears as
bearer was not his own (μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν); hence the guilt of
men was transferred to him; consequently the justification of men
is imputative.” Here the implication that the guilt which Christ
bears is his simply by imputation seems to us contrary to the
analogy of faith. As Adam’s sin is ours only because we are
actually one with Adam, and as Christ’s righteousness is imputed
to us only as we are actually united to Christ, so our sins are
imputed to Christ only as Christ is actually one with the race. He
was “_made sin_” by being made one with the sinners; he took our
guilt by taking our nature. He who “_knew no sin_” came to be
“_sin for us_” by being born of a sinful stock; by inheritance the
common guilt of the race became his. Guilt was not simply
_imputed_ to Christ; it was _imparted_ also.

This exposition may be made more clear by putting the two
contrasted thoughts in parallel columns, as follows:

Made righteousness in him = Made sin for us =
righteous persons; a sinful person;
justified persons; a condemned person;
freed from guilt, or put under guilt, or obligation
obligation to suffer; to suffer;
by spiritual union with by natural union with the
Christ. race.

For a good exposition of _2 Cor. 5:21_, _Gal. 3:13_, and _Rom.
3:25, 26_, see Denney, Studies in Theology, 109-124.

The Atonement, then, on the part of God, has its ground (1) in the
holiness of God, which must visit sin with condemnation, even though this
condemnation brings death to his Son; and (2) in the love of God, which
itself provides the sacrifice, by suffering in and with his Son for the
sins of men, but through that suffering opening a way and means of
salvation.

The Atonement, on the part of man, is accomplished through (1) the
solidarity of the race; of which (2) Christ is the life, and so its
representative and surety; (3) justly yet voluntarily bearing its guilt
and shame and condemnation as his own.

Melanchthon: “Christ was made sin for us, not only in respect to
punishment, but primarily by being chargeable with guilt also
(_culpæ et reatus_)”—quoted by Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
3:95, 102, 103, 107; also 1:307, 314 _sq._ Thomasius says that
“Christ bore the guilt of the race by imputation; but as in the
case of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, imputation of our sins
to Christ presupposes a real relationship. Christ appropriated our
sin. He sank himself into our guilt.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:442
(Syst. Doct., 3:350, 351), agrees with Thomasius, that “Christ
entered into our natural mortality, which for us is a penal
condition, and into the state of collective guilt, so far as it is
an evil, a burden to be borne; not that he had personal guilt, but
rather that he entered into our guilt-laden common life, not as a
stranger, but as one actually belonging to it—put under its law,
according to the will of the Father and of his own love.”

When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon
him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering
that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty
rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty
was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ’s taking human
nature (_Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law_”).
But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty,
it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to
the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus’ circumcision
(_Luke 2:21_); in his ritual purification (_Luke 2:22_—“_their
purification_”—_i. e._, the purification of Mary and the babe; see
Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and
Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (_Luke
2:23, 24_; _cf._ _Ex. 13:2, 13_); and in his baptism (_Mat.
3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness_”). The
baptized person went down into the water, as one laden with sin
and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried
forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new
and holy life. (Ebrard: “Baptism = death.”) So Christ’s submission
to John’s baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to
death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in
that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and
inevitable penalty (_cf._ _Mat. 10:38_; _Luke 12:50_; _Mat.
26:39_); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we
may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of
his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.

As one who had had guilt, Christ was “_justified in the spirit_”
(_1 Tim. 3:16_); and this justification appears to have taken
place after he “_was manifested in the flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_),
and when “_he was raised for our justification_” (_Rom. 4:25_).
Compare _Rom. 1:4_—“_declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead_”; _6:7-10_—“_he that hath died is justified from sin. But if
we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him;
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died,
he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto
God_”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in
the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and
rose again. _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh_”—here Meyer
says: “The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the
condemnation is effected in and with the sending.” _John
16:10_—“_of righteousness, because I go to the Father_”;
_19:30_—“_It is finished._” On _1 Tim. 3:16_, see the Commentary
of Bengel.

If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an
unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and
well-pleasing to God (_Mat. 3:17_), he himself was conscious of a
race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for
(_John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto
this hour_”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the
last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of
death, sin’s penalty (_Mat. 27:46_—“_My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?_”). We must remember that, as even the believer must
“_be judged according to man in the flesh_” (_1 Pet. 4:6_), that
is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of
sin, although he “_live according to God in the Spirit_,” so
Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and
penalty, was “_put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_” (_3:18_);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty
due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he
could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for
others.

If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception
“_sanctified himself_” (_John 17:19_), did not from that moment
also justify himself, we reply that although, through the
retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it,
human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment
that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that
atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and
justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon
the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded
upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious
circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in
the cross, where guilt was first purged (_Heb. 1:3_—“_when he had
made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on high_”; _Mat. 27:42_—“_He saved others; himself he
cannot save_”; _cf._ _Rev. 13:8_—“_the Lamb that hath been slain
from the foundation of the world_”).

If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically
inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had
depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between
them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation
to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in
justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still
remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ
takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity
without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen
Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the
Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219.
_Per contra_, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.

Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made
it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that
historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and
since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the
necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures
and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God’s atonement,
is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as
deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take
upon himself the shame and pain of sin.” The earthly tabernacle
and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens,
and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which
he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the
shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of
the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the
divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so
identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its
life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed
from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first
fruits of that redemption”; _Rom. 4:25_—“_delivered up for our
trespasses ... raised for our justification._”

Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the
Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man;
if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if
the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all
differentiation, _i. e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the
self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react
on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men
have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living
whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate
themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be
separate. This is the mistake made in the ‘Life in Christ’ theory.
Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to
get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to
create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to
ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal to _become_ one
with Christ, as it is refusal to _remain_ one with him, refusal to
let him be our life.”

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into
man’s nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and
made possible the creature’s self-chosen alienation from himself,
the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural
bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond,
and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of
discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you
partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about
atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses
itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the
diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from
adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to
each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to
isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God,
and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which
has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the
creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.

“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying
to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around
itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his
connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt?
Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger.
By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted
as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of
the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of
the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers
pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the
body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be
confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole
organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another.
It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil
and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new
tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of
the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history,
Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the
affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This
suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to
righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all
nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain
and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not
have suffered. But since these things are sin’s penalty and Christ
is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ
should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the
iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only
the ethical interpretation of biological facts.” See also Ames, on
Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov.
1905:943-953.

In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may
urge the following considerations:

(_a_) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the
nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.

This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as
transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the
faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of
the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis,
not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in
the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God’s
holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in
permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the
object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or
the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice,
outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not
benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate
attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be
visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the
useful results that will flow therefrom.

(_b_) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories
before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the
deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.

The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ’s
example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of
his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of
the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the
participation of the believer in Christ’s new humanity, taught by
the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God’s majesty for the
elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical
theory claims that all these other theories require, as a
presupposition for their effective working, that ethical
satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty
human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.

(_c_) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that
the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the
demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.

_Acts 17:3_—“_it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again
from the dead_”—lit.: “_it was necessary for the Christ to
suffer_”; _Luke 24:26_—“_Behooved it not the Christ to suffer
these things, and to enter into his glory?_”—lit.: “_Was it not
necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?_” It is not
enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies
might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer?
Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity
is a necessity in the nature of God.

Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be
unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes
put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be
impaled.” This means that, as human society is at present
constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of
the world. “Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ
vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his
death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life
and heaven.”

(_d_) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met;
namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but
who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.

“_Quo non ascendam?_”—“Whither shall I not rise?” exclaimed the
greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication.
“Whither shall I not stoop?” says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert,
during the scourge of cholera in Italy: “In Castellammare they
make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”

Wrightnour: “The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay
John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted
club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being,
bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have
taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it
would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott,
in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes
placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his
(Alcott’s) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be
broken without punishment following. The result was that very few
rules were broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world,
and endured the penalty for man’s violation of his law.”

(_e_) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language
of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered
as prophetic of Christ’s atoning work.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of
hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in
the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same
gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were
‘_put upon the head of the goat_’ (_Lev. 16:21_) to be borne away
into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out
before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the
sinner which should have been rendered up.” Watts, New
Apologetics, 205—“ ‘_The Lord will provide_’ was the truth taught
when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he ‘_offered up as
a burnt offering in the stead of his son_’ (_Gen. 22:13, 14_). As
the ram was not Abraham’s ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach
that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire
faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that
‘_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission_’ (_Heb.
9:22_).” _2 Chron. 29:27_—“_when the burnt offering began, the
song of Jehovah began also._”

(_f_) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central
feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in
Christian experience.

Martin Luther, when he had realized the truth of the Atonement,
was found sobbing before a crucifix and moaning: “Für mich! für
mich!”—“For me! for me!” Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, while
searching for signs of Sir John Franklin and his party, sent out
eight or ten men to explore the surrounding region. After several
days three returned, almost crazed with the cold—thermometer fifty
degrees below zero—and reported that the other men were dying
miles away. Dr. Kane organized a company of ten, and though
suffering himself with an old heart-trouble, led them to the
rescue. Three times he fainted during the eighteen hours of
marching and suffering; but he found the men. “We knew you would
come! we knew you would come, brother!” whispered one of them,
hardly able to speak. Why was he sure Dr. Kane would come? Because
he knew the stuff Dr. Kane was made of, and knew that he would
risk his life for any one of them. It is a parable of Christ’s
relation to our salvation. He is our elder brother, bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh, and he not only risks death, but he
endures death, in order to save us.

(_g_) It gives us the only means of understanding the sufferings of Christ
in the garden and on the cross, or of reconciling them with the divine
justice.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre: “Man has a guilt that demands the
punitive sufferings of a mediator. Christ shows a suffering that
cannot be justified except by reference to some other guilt than
his own. Combine these two facts, and you have the problem of the
atonement solved.” J. G. Whittier: “Through all the depths of sin
and loss Drops the plummet of the Cross; Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than the Cross could sound.” Alcestis purchased life for
Admetus her husband by dying in his stead; Marcus Curtius saved
Rome by leaping into the yawning chasm; the Russian servant threw
himself to the wolves to rescue his master. Berdoe, Robert
Browning, 47—“To know God as the theist knows him may suffice for
pure spirits, for those who have never sinned, suffered, nor felt
the need of a Savior; but for fallen and sinful men the Christ of
Christianity is an imperative necessity; and those who have never
surrendered themselves to him have never known what it is to
experience the rest he gives to the heavy-laden soul.”

(_h_) As no other theory does, this view satisfies the ethical demand of
human nature; pacifies the convicted conscience; assures the sinner that
he may find instant salvation in Christ; and so makes possible a new life
of holiness, while at the same time it furnishes the highest incentives to
such a life.

Shedd: “The offended party (1) permits a substitution; (2)
provides a substitute; (3) substitutes himself.” George Eliot:
“Justice is like the kingdom of God; it is not without us, as a
fact; it is ‘within us,’ as a great yearning.” But it is both
without and within, and the inward is only the reflection of the
outward; the subjective demands of conscience only reflect the
objective demands of holiness.

And yet, while this view of the atonement exalts the holiness of
God, it surpasses every other view in its moving exhibition of
God’s love—a love that is not satisfied with suffering in and with
the sinner, or with making that suffering a demonstration of God’s
regard for law; but a love that sinks itself into the sinner’s
guilt and bears his penalty,—comes down so low as to make itself
one with him in all but his depravity—makes every sacrifice but
the sacrifice of God’s holiness—a sacrifice which God could not
make, without ceasing to be God; see _1 John 4:10_—“_Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his
Son to be the propitiation for our sins._” The soldier who had
been thought reprobate was moved to complete reform when he was
once forgiven. William Huntington, in his Autobiography, says that
one of his sharpest sensations of pain, after he had been
quickened by divine grace, was that he felt such pity for God.
Never was man abused as God has been. _Rom. 2:4_—“_the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance_”; _12:1_—“_the mercies of God_”
lead you “_to present your bodies a living sacrifice_”; _2 Cor.
5:14, 15_—“_the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for
all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves,
but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again._” The effect
of Christ’s atonement on Christian character and life may be
illustrated from the proclamation of Garabaldi: “He that loves
Italy, let him follow me! I promise him hardship, I promise him
suffering, I promise him death. But he that loves Italy, let him
follow me!”

D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement.

On the general subject of these objections, Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180, remarks: (1) that it rests with God
alone to say whether he will pardon sin, and in what way he will
pardon it; (2) that human instincts are a very unsafe standard by
which to judge the procedure of the Governor of the universe; and
(3) that one plain declaration of God, with regard to the plan of
salvation, proves the fallacy and error of all reasonings against
it. We must correct our watches and clocks by astronomic
standards.

(_a_) That a God who does not pardon sin without atonement must lack
either omnipotence or love.—We answer, on the one hand, that God’s
omnipotence is the revelation of his nature, and not a matter of arbitrary
will; and, on the other hand, that God’s love is ever exercised
consistently with his fundamental attribute of holiness, so that while
holiness demands the sacrifice, love provides it. Mercy is shown, not by
trampling upon the claims of justice, but by vicariously satisfying them.

Because man does not need to avenge personal wrongs, it does not
follow that God must not. In fact, such avenging is forbidden to
us upon the ground that it belongs to God; _Rom. 12:19_—“_Avenge
not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is
written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the
Lord._” But there are limits even to our passing over of offences.
Even the father must sometimes chastise; and although this
chastisement is not properly punishment, it becomes punishment,
when the father becomes a teacher or a governor. Then, other than
personal interests come in. “Because a father can forgive without
atonement, it does not follow that the state can do the same”
(Shedd). But God is more than Father, more than Teacher, more than
Governor. In him, person and right are identical. For him to let
sin go unpunished is to approve of it; which is the same as a
denial of holiness.

Whatever pardon is granted, then, must be pardon through
punishment. Mere repentance never expiates crime, even under civil
government. The truly penitent man never feels that his repentance
constitutes a ground of acceptance; the more he repents, the more
he recognizes his need of reparation and expiation. Hence God
meets the demand of man’s conscience, as well as of his own
holiness, when he provides a substituted punishment. God shows his
love by meeting the demands of holiness, and by meeting them with
the sacrifice of himself. See Mozley on Predestination, 390.

The publican prays, not that God may be merciful without
sacrifice, but: “_God be propitiated toward me, the sinner!_”
(_Luke 18:13_); in other words, he asks for mercy only through and
upon the ground of, sacrifice. We cannot atone to others for the
wrong we have done them, nor can we even atone to our own souls. A
third party, and an infinite being, must make atonement, as we
cannot. It is only upon the ground that God himself has made
provision for satisfying the claims of justice, that we are bidden
to forgive others. Should Othello then forgive Iago? Yes, if Iago
repents; _Luke 17:3_—“_If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he
repent, forgive him._” But if he does not repent? Yes, so far as
Othello’s own disposition is concerned. He must not hate Iago, but
must wish him well; _Luke 6:27_—“_Love your enemies, do good to
them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that
despitefully use you._” But he cannot receive Iago to his
fellowship till he repents. On the duty and ground of forgiving
one another, see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 613, 614; Straffen,
Hulsean Lectures on the Propitiation for Sin.

(_b_) That satisfaction and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.—We answer
that, since it is not a third party, but the Judge himself, who makes
satisfaction to his own violated holiness, forgiveness is still optional,
and may be offered upon terms agreeable to himself. Christ’s sacrifice is
not a pecuniary, but a penal, satisfaction. The objection is valid against
the merely commercial view of the atonement, not against the ethical view
of it.

Forgiveness is something beyond the mere taking away of penalty.
When a man bears the penalty of his crime, has the community no
right to be indignant with him? There is a distinction between
pecuniary and penal satisfaction. Pecuniary satisfaction has
respect only to the thing due; penal satisfaction has respect also
to the person of the offender. If pardon is a matter of justice in
God’s government, it is so only as respects Christ. To the
recipient it is only mercy. “_Faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins_” (_1 John 1:9_)—faithful to his promise, and righteous
to Christ. Neither the atonement, nor the promise, gives the
offender any personal claim.

Philemon must forgive Onesimus the pecuniary _debt_, when Paul
pays it; not so with the personal _injury_ Onesimus has done to
Philemon; there is no forgiveness of this, until Onesimus repents
and asks pardon. An amnesty may be offered to all, but upon
conditions. Instance Amos Lawrence’s offering to the forger the
forged paper he had bought up, upon condition that he would
confess himself bankrupt, and put all his affairs into the hands
of his benefactor. So the fact that Christ has paid our debts does
not preclude his offering to us the benefit of what he has done,
upon condition of our repentance and faith. The equivalent is not
furnished by man, but by God. God may therefore offer the results
of it upon his own terms. Did then the entire race fairly pay its
penalty when one suffered, just as all incurred the penalty when
one sinned? Yes,—all who receive their life from each—Adam on the
one hand, and Christ on the other. See under Union with Christ—its
Consequences; see also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 295 note,
321, and Dogm. Theol., 2:383-389; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:614-615
(Syst. Doct., 4:82, 83). _Versus_ Current Discussions in Theology,
5:281.

Hovey calls Christ’s relation to human sin a vice-penal one. Just
as vice-regal position carries with it all the responsibility,
care, and anxiety of regal authority, so does a vice-penal
relation to sin carry with it all the suffering and loss of the
original punishment. The person on whom it falls is different, but
his punishment is the same, at least in penal value. As vice-regal
authority may be superseded by regal, so vice-penal suffering, if
despised, may be superseded by the original penalty. Is there a
waste of vice-penal suffering when any are lost for whom it was
endured? On the same principle we might object to any suffering on
the part of Christ for those who refuse to be saved by him. Such
suffering may benefit others, if not those for whom it was in the
first instance endured.

If compensation is made, it is said, there is nothing to forgive;
if forgiveness is granted, no compensation can be required. This
reminds us of Narvaez, who saw no reason for forgiving his enemies
until he had shot them all. When the offended party furnishes the
compensation, he can offer its benefits upon his own terms. Dr.
Pentecost: “A prisoner in Scotland was brought before the Judge.
As the culprit entered the box, he looked into the face of the
Judge to see if he could discover mercy there. The Judge and the
prisoner exchanged glances, and then there came a mutual
recognition. The prisoner said to himself: ‘It is all right this
time,’ for the Judge had been his classmate in Edinburgh
University twenty-five years before. When sentence was pronounced,
it was five pounds sterling, the limit of the law for the
misdemeanor charged, and the culprit was sorely disappointed as he
was led away to prison. But the Judge went at once and paid the
fine, telling the clerk to write the man’s discharge. This the
Judge delivered in person, explaining that the demands of the law
must be met, and having been met, the man was free.”

(_c_) That there can be no real propitiation, since the judge and the
sacrifice are one.—We answer that this objection ignores the existence of
personal relations within the divine nature, and the fact that the God-man
is distinguishable from God. The satisfaction is grounded in the
distinction of persons in the Godhead; while the love in which it
originates belongs to the unity of the divine essence.

The satisfaction is not rendered to a _part_ of the Godhead, for
the whole Godhead is in the Father, in a certain manner; as
omnipresence = _totus in omni parte_. So the offering is perfect,
because the whole Godhead is also in Christ (_2 Cor. 5:19_—“_God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself_”). Lyman Abbott
says that the word “propitiate” is used in the New Testament only
in the middle voice, to show that God propitiates himself.
Lyttelton, in Lux Mundi, 302—“The Atonement is undoubtedly a
mystery, but all forgiveness is a mystery. It avails to lift the
load of guilt that presses upon an offender. A change passes over
him that can only be described as regenerative, life-giving; and
thus the assurance of pardon, however conveyed, may be said to
obliterate in some degree the consequences of the past. 310—Christ
bore sufferings, not that we might be freed from them, for we have
deserved them, but that we might be enabled to bear them, as he
did, victoriously and in unbroken union with God.”

(_d_) That the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is not an
execution of justice, but an act of manifest injustice.—We answer, that
this is true only upon the supposition that the Son bears the penalty of
our sins, not voluntarily, but compulsorily; or upon the supposition that
one who is personally innocent can in no way become involved in the guilt
and penalty of others,—both of them hypotheses contrary to Scripture and
to fact.

The mystery of the atonement lies in the fact of unmerited
sufferings on the part of Christ. Over against this stands the
corresponding mystery of unmerited pardon to believers. We have
attempted to show that, while Christ was personally innocent, he
was so involved with others in the consequences of the Fall, that
the guilt and penalty of the race belonged to him to bear. When we
discuss the doctrine of Justification, we shall see that, by a
similar union of the believer with Christ, Christ’s justification
becomes ours.

To one who believes in Christ as the immanent God, the life of
humanity, the Creator and Upholder of mankind, the bearing by
Christ of the just punishment of human sin seems inevitable. The
very laws of nature are only the manifestation of his holiness,
and he who thus reveals God is also subject to God’s law. The
historical process which culminated on Calvary was the
manifestation of an age-long suffering endured by Christ on
account of his connection with the race from the very first moment
of their sin. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 80-83—“A God of
love and holiness must be a God of suffering just so certainly as
there is sin. Paul declares that he fills up ‘_that which is
lacking of the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake,
which is the church_’ (_Col. 1:24_); in other words, Christ still
suffers in the believers who are his body. The historical
suffering indeed is ended; the agony of Golgotha is finished; the
days when joy was swallowed up in sorrow are past; death has no
more dominion over our Lord. But sorrow for sin is not ended; it
still continues and will continue so long as sin exists. But it
does not now militate against Christ’s blessedness, because the
sorrow is overbalanced and overborne by the infinite knowledge and
glory of his divine nature. Bushnell and Beecher were right when
they maintained that suffering for sin was the natural consequence
of Christ’s relation to the sinning creation. They were wrong in
mistaking the nature of that suffering and in not seeing that the
constitution of things which necessitates it, since it is the
expression of God’s holiness, gives that suffering a penal
character and makes Christ a substitutionary offering for the sins
of the world.”

(_e_) That there can be no transfer of punishment or merit, since these
are personal.—We answer that the idea of representation and suretyship is
common in human society and government; and that such representation and
suretyship are inevitable, wherever there is community of life between the
innocent and the guilty. When Christ took our nature, he could not do
otherwise than take our responsibilities also.

Christ became responsible for the humanity with which he was
organically one. Both poets and historians have recognized the
propriety of one member of a house, or a race, answering for
another. Antigone expiates the crime of her house. Marcus Curtius
holds himself ready to die for his nation. Louis XVI has been
called a “sacrificial lamb,” offered up for the crimes of his
race. So Christ’s sacrifice is of benefit to the whole family of
man, because he is one with that family. But here is the
limitation also. It does not extend to angels, because he took not
on him the nature of angels (_Heb. 2:16_—“_For verily not of the
angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”).

“A strange thing happened recently in one of our courts of
justice. A young man was asked why the extreme penalty should not
be passed upon him. At that moment, a gray-haired man, his face
furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner’s box unhindered,
placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit’s shoulder, and
said: ‘Your honor, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has
been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.’
‘We!’ There was nothing against this old father. Yet, at that
moment he lost himself. He identified his very being with that of
his wayward boy. Do you not pity the criminal son because of your
pity for his aged and sorrowing father? Because he has so
suffered, is not your demand that the son suffer somewhat
mitigated? Will not the judge modify his sentence on that account?
Nature knows no forgiveness; but human nature does; and it is not
nature, but human nature, that is made in the image of God”; see
Prof. A. S. Coats, in The Examiner, Sept. 12, 1889.

(_f_) That remorse, as a part of the penalty of sin, could not have been
suffered by Christ.—We answer, on the one hand, that it may not be
essential to the idea of penalty that Christ should have borne the
identical pangs which the lost would have endured; and, on the other hand,
that we do not know how completely a perfectly holy being, possessed of
super-human knowledge and love, might have felt even the pangs of remorse
for the condition of that humanity of which he was the central conscience
and heart.

Instance the lawyer, mourning the fall of a star of his
profession; the woman, filled with shame by the degradation of one
of her own sex; the father, anguished by his daughter’s
waywardness; the Christian, crushed by the sins of the church and
the world. The self-isolating spirit cannot conceive how perfectly
love and holiness can make their own the sin of the race of which
they are a part.

Simon, Reconciliation, 366—“Inasmuch as the sin of the human race
culminated in the crucifixion which crowned Christ’s own
sufferings, clearly the life of humanity entering him
subconsciously must have been most completely laden with sin and
with the fear of death which is its fruit, at the very moment when
he himself was enduring death in its most terrible form. Of
necessity therefore he felt as if he were the sinner of sinners,
and cried out in agony: ‘_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?_’ (_Mat. 27:46_).”

Christ could realize our penal condition. Beings who have a like
spiritual nature can realize and bear the spiritual sufferings of
one another. David’s sorrow was not unjust, when he cried: “_Would
I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!_” (_2 Sam.
18:33_). Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Is penitence
possible in the personally sinless? We answer that only one who is
perfectly sinless can perfectly repent, and this identification of
the sinless with the sinner is vital to the gospel.” Lucy Larcom:
“There be sad women, sick and poor. And those who walk in garments
soiled; Their shame, their sorrow I endure; By their defeat my
hope is foiled; The blot they bear is on my name; Who sins, and I
am not to blame?”

(_g_) That the sufferings of Christ, as finite in time, do not constitute
a satisfaction to the infinite demands of the law.—We answer that the
infinite dignity of the sufferer constitutes his sufferings a full
equivalent, in the eye of infinite justice. Substitution excludes identity
of suffering; it does not exclude equivalence. Since justice aims its
penalties not so much at the person as at the sin, it may admit equivalent
suffering, when this is endured in the very nature that has sinned.

The sufferings of a dog, and of a man, have different values.
Death is the wages of sin; and Christ, in suffering death,
suffered our penalty. Eternity of suffering is unessential to the
idea of penalty. A finite being cannot exhaust an infinite curse;
but an infinite being can exhaust it, in a few brief hours. Shedd,
Discourses and Essays, 307—“A golden eagle is worth a thousand
copper cents. The penalty paid by Christ is strictly and literally
_equivalent_ to that which the sinner would have borne, although
it is not _identical_. The vicarious bearing of it excludes the
latter.” Andrew Fuller thought Christ would have had to suffer
just as much, if only one sinner were to have been saved thereby.

The atonement is a unique fact, only partially illustrated by debt
and penalty. Yet the terms “purchase” and “ransom” are Scriptural,
and mean simply that the justice of God punishes sin as it
deserves; and that, having determined what is deserved, God cannot
change. See Owen, quoted in Campbell on Atonement, 58, 59.
Christ’s sacrifice, since it is absolutely infinite, can have
nothing added to it. If Christ’s sacrifice satisfies the Judge of
all, it may well satisfy us.

(_h_) That if Christ’s passive obedience made satisfaction to the divine
justice, then his active obedience was superfluous.—We answer that the
active obedience and the passive obedience are inseparable. The latter is
essential to the former; and both are needed to secure for the sinner, on
the one hand, pardon, and, on the other hand, that which goes beyond
pardon, namely, restoration to the divine favor. The objection holds only
against a superficial and external view of the atonement.

For more full exposition of this point, see our treatment of
Justification; and also, Owen, in Works, 5:175-204. Both the
active and the passive obedience of Christ are insisted on by the
apostle Paul. Opposition to the Pauline theology is opposition to
the gospel of Christ. Charles Cuthbert Hall, Universal Elements of
the Christian Religion, 140—“The effects of this are already
appearing in the impoverished religious values of the sermons
produced by the younger generation of preachers, and the
deplorable decline of spiritual life and knowledge in many
churches. Results open to observation show that the movement to
simplify the Christian essence by discarding the theology of St.
Paul easily carries the teaching of the Christian pulpit to a
position where, for those who submit to that teaching, the
characteristic experiences of the Christian life became
practically impossible. The Christian sense of sin; Christian
penitence at the foot of the Cross; Christian faith in an atoning
Savior; Christian peace with God through the mediation of Jesus
Christ—these and other experiences, which were the very life of
apostles and apostolic souls, fade from the view of the ministry,
have no meaning for the younger generation.”

(_i_) That the doctrine is immoral in its practical tendencies, since
Christ’s obedience takes the place of ours, and renders ours
unnecessary.—We answer that the objection ignores not only the method by
which the benefits of the atonement are appropriated, namely, repentance
and faith, but also the regenerating and sanctifying power bestowed upon
all who believe. Faith in the atonement does not induce license, but
“works by love” (Gal. 5:6) and “cleanses the heart” (Acts 15:9).

Water is of little use to a thirsty man, if he will not drink. The
faith which accepts Christ ratifies all that Christ has done, and
takes Christ as a new principle of life. Paul bids Philemon
receive Onesimus as himself,—not the old Onesimus, but a new
Onesimus into whom the spirit of Paul has entered (_Philemon 17_).
So God receives us as new creatures in Christ. Though we cannot
earn salvation, we must take it; and this taking it involves a
surrender of heart and life which ensures union with Christ and
moral progress.

What shall be done to the convicted murderer who tears up the
pardon which his wife’s prayers and tears have secured from the
Governor? Nothing remains but to execute the sentence of the law.
Hon. George F. Danforth, Justice of the New York State Court of
Appeals, in a private letter says: “Although it may be stated in a
general way that a pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed
for the offence and the guilt of the offender, so that in the eye
of the law he is as innocent as if he had never committed the
offence, the pardon making him as it were a new man with a new
credit and capacity, yet a delivery of the pardon is essential to
its validity, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It
cannot be forced upon him. In that respect it is like a deed. The
delivery may be in person to the offender or to his agent, and its
acceptance may be proved by circumstances like any other fact.”

(_j_) That if the atonement requires faith as its complement, then it does
not in itself furnish a complete satisfaction to God’s justice.—We answer
that faith is not the ground of our acceptance with God, as the atonement
is, and so is not a work at all; faith is only the medium of
appropriation. We are saved not by faith, or on account of faith, but only
through faith. It is not faith, but the atonement which faith accepts,
that satisfies the justice of God.

Illustrate by the amnesty granted to a city, upon conditions to be
accepted by each inhabitant. The acceptance is not the ground upon
which the amnesty is granted; it is the medium through which the
benefits of the amnesty are enjoyed. With regard to the
difficulties connected with the atonement, we may say, in
conclusion, with Bishop Butler: “If the Scripture has, as surely
it has, left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mysterious,
left somewhat in it unrevealed, all conjectures about it must be,
if not evidently absurd, yet at least uncertain. Nor has any one
reason to complain for want of further information, unless he can
show his claim to it.” While we cannot say with President Stearns:
“Christ’s work removed the hindrances in the eternal justice of
the universe to the pardon of the sinner, but _how_ we cannot
tell”—cannot say this, because we believe the main outlines of the
plan of salvation to be revealed in Scripture—yet we grant that
many questions remain unsolved. But, as bread nourishes even those
who know nothing of its chemical constituents, or of the method of
its digestion and assimilation, so the atonement of Christ saves
those who accept it, even though they do not know _how_ it saves
them. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 264-267—“Heat was once
thought to be a form of matter; now it is regarded as a mode of
motion. We can get the good of it, whichever theory we adopt, or
even if we have no theory. So we may get the good of
reconciliation with God, even though we differ as to our theory of
the Atonement.”—“One of the Roman Emperors commanded his fleet to
bring from Alexandria sand for the arena, although his people at
Rome were visited with famine. But a certain shipmaster declared
that, whatever the emperor commanded, his ship should bring wheat.
So, whatever sand others may bring to starving human souls, let us
bring to them the wheat of the gospel—the substitutionary
atonement of Jesus Christ.” For answers to objections, see
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180; Crawford, Atonement,
384-468; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:526-543; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
623 sq.; Wm. Thomson, The Atoning Work of Christ; Hopkins, Works,
1:321.

E. The Extent of the Atonement.

The Scriptures represent the atonement as having been made for all men,
and as sufficient for the salvation of all. Not the _atonement_ therefore
is limited, but the _application_ of the atonement through the work of the
Holy Spirit.

Upon this principle of a universal atonement, but a special application of
it to the elect, we must interpret such passages as Eph. 1:4, 7; 2 Tim.
1:9, 10; John 17:9, 20, 24—asserting a special efficacy of the atonement
in the case of the elect; and also such passages as 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John
2:2; Tim. 2:6; 4:10; Tit. 2:11—asserting that the death of Christ is for
all.

Passages asserting special efficacy of the atonement, in the case
of the elect, are the following: _Eph. 1:4_—“_chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without __ blemish before him in love_”; _7_—“_in whom we have our
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace_”; _2 Tim. 1:9, 10_—God “_who
saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given
us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now been
manifested by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who
abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through
the gospel_”; _John 17:9_—“_I pray for them: I pray not for the
world, but for those whom thou hast given me_”; _20_—“_Neither for
these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through
their word_”; _24_—“_Father, that which thou hast given me, I
desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that they may
beheld my glory, which thou hast given me._”

Passages asserting that the death of Christ is for all are the
following: _2 Pet 2:1_—“_false teachers, who shall privily bring
in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought
them_”; _1 John 2:2_—“_and he is the propitiation for our sins;
and not for ours only, but also for the whole world_”; _1 Tim.
2:6_—Christ Jesus “_who gave himself a ransom for all_”;
_4:10_—“_the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially
of them that believe_”; _Tit. 2:11_—“_For the grace of God hath
appeared, bringing salvation to all men._” _Rom. 3:22_ (A.
V.)—“_unto all and upon all them that believe_”—has sometimes been
interpreted as meaning “unto all men, and upon all believers” (εἰς
= destination; ἐπί = extent). But the Rev. Vers. omits the words
“_and upon all_,” and Meyer, who retains the words, remarks that
τοῦς πιστεύοντας belongs to πάντας in both instances.

Unconscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by virtue of
our common humanity in him, makes us the heirs of much temporal
blessing. Conscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by
virtue of our faith in him and his work for us, gives us
justification and eternal life. Matthew Henry said that the
Atonement is “sufficient for all; effectual for many.” J. M.
Whiton, in The Outlook, Sept. 25, 1897—“It was Samuel Hopkins of
Rhode Island (1721-1803) who first declared that Christ had made
atonement for all men, not for the elect part alone, as Calvinists
affirmed.” We should say “as some Calvinists affirmed”; for, as we
shall see, John Calvin himself declared that “Christ suffered for
the sins of the whole world.” Alfred Tennyson once asked an old
Methodist woman what was the news. “Why, Mr. Tennyson, there’s
only one piece of news that I know,—that Christ died for all men.”
And he said to her; “That is old news, and good news, and new
news.”

If it be asked in what sense Christ is the Savior of all men, we reply:

(_a_) That the atonement of Christ secures for all men a delay in the
execution of the sentence against sin, and a space for repentance,
together with a continuance of the common blessings of life which have
been forfeited by transgression.

If strict justice had been executed, the race would have been cut
off at the first sin. That man lives after sinning, is due wholly
to the Cross. There is a pretermission, or “_passing over of the
sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God_” (_Rom. 3:25_),
the justification of which is found only in the sacrifice of
Calvary. This “_passing over_,” however, is limited in its
duration: see _Acts 17:30, 31_—“_The times of ignorance therefore
God overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all
everywhere repent: inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath
ordained._”

One may get the benefit of the law of gravitation without
understanding much about its nature, and patriarchs and heathen
have doubtless been saved through Christ’s atonement, although
they have never heard his name, but have only cast themselves as
helpless sinners upon the mercy of God. That mercy of God was
Christ, though they did not know it. Our modern pious Jews will
experience a strange surprise when they find that not only
forgiveness of sin but every other blessing of life has come to
them through the crucified Jesus. _Matt. 8:11_—“_many shall come
from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven._”

Dr. G.W. Northrop held that the work of Christ is universal in
three respects: 1. It reconciled God to the whole race, apart from
personal transgression; 2. It secured the bestowment upon all of
common grace, and the means of common grace; 3. It rendered
certain the bestowment of eternal life upon all who would so use
common grace and the means of common grace as to make it morally
possible for God as a wise and holy Governor to grant his special
and renewing grace.

(_b_) That the atonement of Christ has made objective provision for the
salvation of all, by removing from the divine mind every obstacle to the
pardon and restoration of sinners, except their wilful opposition to God
and refusal to turn to him.

Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 604—“On God’s side, all is now taken
away which could make a separation,—unless any should themselves
choose to remain separated from him.” The gospel message is not:
God will forgive if you return; but rather: God _has_ shown mercy;
only believe, and it is your portion in Christ.

Ashmore, The New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review,
26:245-264—“The atonement has come to all men and upon all men.
Its coëxtensiveness with the effects of Adam’s sin is seen in that
all creatures, such as infants and insane persons, incapable of
refusing it, are saved without their consent, just as they were
involved in the sin of Adam without their consent. The reason why
others are not saved is because when the atonement comes to them
and upon them, instead of consenting to be included in it, they
reject it. If they are born under the curse, so likewise they are
born under the atonement which is intended to remove that curse;
they remain under its shelter till they are old enough to
repudiate it; they shut out its influences as a man closes his
window-blind to shut out the beams of the sun; they ward them off
by direct opposition, as a man builds dykes around his field to
keep out the streams which would otherwise flow in and fertilize
the soil.”

(_c_) That the atonement of Christ has procured for all men the powerful
incentives to repentance presented in the Cross, and the combined agency
of the Christian church and of the Holy Spirit, by which these incentives
are brought to bear upon them.

Just as much sun and rain would be needed, if only one farmer on
earth were to be benefited. Christ would not need to suffer more,
if all were to be saved. His sufferings, as we have seen, were not
the payment of a pecuniary debt. Having endured the penalty of the
sinner, justice permits the sinner’s discharge, but does not
require it, except as the fulfilment of a promise to his
substitute, and then only upon the appointed condition of
repentance and faith. The _atonement_ is unlimited,—the whole
human race might be saved through it; the _application_ of the
atonement is limited,—only those who repent and believe are
actually saved by it.

Robert G. Farley: “The prospective mother prepares a complete and
beautiful outfit for her expected child. But the child is
still-born. Yet the outfit was prepared just the same as if it had
lived. And Christ’s work is completed as much for one man as for
another, as much for the unbeliever as for the believer.”

Christ is specially the Savior of those who believe, in that he exerts a
special power of his Spirit to procure their acceptance of his salvation.
This is not, however, a part of his work of atonement; it is the
application of the atonement, and as such is hereafter to be considered.

Among those who hold to a limited atonement is Owen. Campbell
quotes him as saying: “Christ did not die for all the sins of all
men; for if this were so, why are not all freed from the
punishment of all their sins? You will say, ‘Because of their
unbelief,—they will not believe.’ But this unbelief is a sin, and
Christ was punished for it. Why then does this, more than other
sins, hinder them from partaking of the fruits of his death?”

So also Turretin, loc. 4, quæs. 10 and 17; Symington, Atonement,
184-234; Candlish on the Atonement; Cunningham, Hist. Theol.,
2:323-370; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:464-489. For the view presented
in the text, see Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:373, 374; 689-698;
706-709; Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 2:485-549; Jenkyn, Extent of the
Atonement; E. P. Griffin, Extent of the Atonement; Woods, Works,
2:490-521; Richards, Lectures on Theology, 302-327.

2. Christ’s Intercessory Work.

The Priesthood of Christ does not cease with his work of atonement, but
continues forever. In the presence of God he fulfils the second office of
the priest, namely that of intercession.

_Heb. 7:23-25_—“_priests many in number, because that by death
they are hindered from continuing: but he, because he abideth
forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is
able to save to the uttermost them that draw near onto God through
him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them._” C. H.
M. on _Ex. 17:12_—“The hands of our great Intercessor never hang
down, as Moses’ did, nor does he need any one to hold them up. The
same rod of God’s power which was used by Moses to smite the rock
(Atonement) was in Moses’ hand on the hill (Intercession).”

Denney’s Studies in Theology, 166—“If we see nothing unnatural in
the fact that Christ prayed for Peter on earth, we need not make
any difficulty about his praying for us in heaven. The relation is
the same; the only difference is that Christ is now exalted, and
prays, not with strong crying and tears, but in the sovereignty
and prevailing power of one who has achieved eternal redemption
for his people.”

A. Nature of Christ’s Intercession.—This is not to be conceived of either
as an external and vocal petitioning, nor as a mere figure of speech for
the natural and continuous influence of his sacrifice; but rather as a
special activity of Christ in securing, upon the ground of that sacrifice,
whatever of blessing comes to men, whether that blessing be temporal or
spiritual.

_1 John 2:1_—“_if any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous_”; _Rom. 8:34_—“_It is Jesus
Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who
is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
us_”—here Meyer seems to favor the meaning of external and vocal
petitioning, as of the glorified God-man: _Heb. 7:25_—“_ever
liveth to make intercession for them._” On the ground of this
effectual intercession he can pronounce the true sacerdotal
_benediction_; and all the benedictions of his ministers and
apostles are but fruits and emblems of this (see the Aaronic
benediction in _Num. 6:24-26_, and the apostolic benedictions in
_1 Cor. 1:3_ and _2 Cor. 13:14_).

B. Objects of Christ’s Intercession.—We may distinguish (_a_) that general
intercession which secures to all men certain temporal benefits of his
atoning work, and (_b_) that special intercession which secures the divine
acceptance of the persons of believers and the divine bestowment of all
gifts needful for their salvation.

(_a_) General intercession for all men: _Is. 53:12_—“_he bare the
sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors_”; _Luke
23:34_—“_And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do_”—a beginning of his priestly intercession, even
while he was being nailed to the cross.

(_b_) Special intercession for his saints: _Mat. 18:19, 20_—“_if
two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in
heaven. For when two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them_”; _Luke 22:31, 32_—“_Simon,
Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as
wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail
not_”; _John 14:16_—“_I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter_”; _17:9_—“_I pray for them; I pray not for
the world, but for those whom thou hast given me_”; _Acts
2:33_—“_Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and
having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he
hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear_”; _Eph. 1:6_—“_the
glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the
Beloved_”; _2:18_—“_through him we both have our access in one
Spirit unto the Father_”; _3:12_—“_in whom we have boldness and
access in confidence through our faith in him_”; _Heb. 2:17,
18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto
his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the
sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being
tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted_”; _4:15,
16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore
draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy, and may find grace to help as in time of need_”; _1
Pet 2:5_—“_a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices,
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ_”; _Rev. 5:6_—“_And I saw
in the midst of the throne ... a Lamb standing, as though it had
been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the
seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth_”; _7:16,
17_—“_They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither
shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: for the lamb that is
in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall
guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe
away every tear from their eyes._”

C. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of the Holy Spirit.—The Holy
Spirit is an advocate within us, teaching us how to pray as we ought;
Christ is an advocate in heaven, securing from the Father the answer of
our prayers. Thus the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit are
complements to each other, and parts of one whole.

_John 14:26_—“_But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and
bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you_”; _Rom.
8:26_—“_And in like manner the Spirit __ also helpeth our
infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit
himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered_”; _27_—“_and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the
saints according to the will of God._”

The intercession of the Holy Spirit may be illustrated by the work
of the mother, who teaches her child to pray by putting words into
his mouth or by suggesting subjects for prayer. “The whole Trinity
is present in the Christian’s closet; the Father hears; the Son
advocates his cause at the Father’s right hand; the Holy Spirit
intercedes in the heart of the believer.” Therefore “When God
inclines the heart to pray, He hath an ear to hear.” The impulse
to prayer, within our hearts, is evidence that Christ is urging
our claims in heaven.

D. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of saints.—All true
intercession is either directly or indirectly the intercession of Christ.
Christians are organs of Christ’s Spirit. To suppose Christ in us to offer
prayer to one of his saints, instead of directly to the Father, is to
blaspheme Christ, and utterly misconceive the nature of prayer.

Saints on earth, by their union with Christ, the great high
priest, are themselves constituted intercessors; and as the high
priest of old bore upon his bosom the breastplate engraven with
the names of the tribes of Israel (_Ex. 28:9-12_), so the
Christian is to bear upon his heart in prayer before God the
interests of his family, the church, and the world (_1 Tim.
3:1_—“_I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications,
prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men_”). See
Symington on Intercession, in Atonement and Intercession, 256-308;
Milligan, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord.

Luckock, After Death, finds evidence of belief in the intercession
of the saints in heaven as early as the second century. Invocation
of the saints he regards as beginning not earlier than the fourth
century. He approves the doctrine that the saints pray _for us_,
but rejects the doctrine that we are to pray _to them_. Prayers
_for_ the dead he strongly advocates. Bramhall, Works,
1:57—Invocation of the saints is “not necessary, for two reasons:
_first_, no saint doth love us so well as Christ: no saint hath
given us such assurance of his love, or done so much for us as
Christ; no saint is so willing to help us as Christ; and
_secondly_, we have no command from God to invocate them.” A. B.
Cave: “The system of human mediation falls away in the advent to
our souls of the living Christ. Who wants stars, or even the moon,
after the sun is up?”

III. The Kingly Office of Christ.

This is to be distinguished from the sovereignty which Christ originally
possessed in virtue of his divine nature. Christ’s kingship is the
sovereignty of the divine-human Redeemer, which belonged to him of right
from the moment of his birth, but which was fully exercised only from the
time of his entrance upon the state of exaltation. By virtue of this
kingly office, Christ rules all things in heaven and earth, for the glory
of God and the execution of God’s purpose of salvation.

(_a_) With respect to the universe at large, Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom
of power; he upholds, governs, and judges the world.

_Ps. 2:6-8_—“_I have set my king.... Thou art my son.... uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession_”; _8:6_—“_madest him to
have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all
things under his feet_”; _cf._ _Heb. 2:8, 9_—“_we see not yet all
things subjected to him. But we beheld ... Jesus ... crowned with
glory and honor_”; _Mat. 25:31, 32_—“_when the Son of man shall
come in his glory ... then shall he sit on the throne of his
glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations_”;
_28:18_—“_All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on
earth_”; _Heb. 1:3_—“_upholding all things by the word of his
power_”; _Rev. 19:15, 16_—“_smite the nations ... rule them with a
rod of iron ... King of Kings, and Lord of Lords._”

Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 34, says incorrectly, as we think,
that “the _regnum naturæ_ of the old theology is
unsupported,—there are only the _regnum gratiæ_ and the _regnum
gloriæ_.” A. J. Gordon: “Christ is now creation’s sceptre-bearer,
as he was once creation’s burden-bearer.”

(_b_) With respect to his militant church, it is a kingdom of grace; he
founds, legislates for, administers, defends, and augments his church on
earth.

_Luke 2:11_—“_born to you ... a Savior, who is Christ the lord_”;
_19:38_—“_Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the
Lord_”; _John 18:36, 37_—“_My kingdom is not of this world....
Thou sayest it, for I am a king.... Every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice_”; _Eph. 1:22_—“_he put all things in subjection
under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the
church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in
all_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for
ever and ever._”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:677 (Syst. Doct., 4:142, 143)—“All great
men can be said to have an after-influence (_Nachwirkung_) after
their death, but only of Christ can it be said that he has an
after-activity (_Fortwirkung_). The sending of the Spirit is part
of Christ’s work as King.” P. S. Moxom, Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan.
1886:25-36—“Preëminence of Christ, as source of the church’s
being; ground of the church’s unity; source of the church’s law;
mould of the church’s life.” A. J. Gordon: “As the church endures
hardness and humiliation as united to him who was on the cross, so
she should exhibit something of supernatural energy as united with
him who is on the throne.” Luther: “We tell our Lord God, that if
he will have his church, he must look after it himself. We cannot
sustain it, and, if we could, we should become the proudest asses
under heaven.... If it had been possible for pope, priest or
minister to destroy the church of Jesus Christ, it would have been
destroyed long ago.” Luther, watching the proceedings of the Diet
of Augsburg, made a noteworthy discovery. He saw the stars bestud
the canopy of the sky, and though there were no pillars to hold
them up they kept their place and the sky fell not. The business
of holding up the sky and its stars has been on the minds of men
in all ages. But we do not need to provide props to hold up the
sky. God will look after his church and after Christian doctrine.
For of Christ it has been written in _1 Cor. 15:25_—“_For he must
reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet._”

“Thrice blessed is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell
That God is in the field when he Is most invisible.” Since Christ
is King, it is a duty never to despair of church or of the world.
Dr. E. G. Robinson declared that Christian character was never
more complete than now, nor more nearly approaching the ideal man.
We may add that modern education, modern commerce, modern
invention, modern civilization, are to be regarded as the
revelations of Christ, the Light of the world, and the Ruler of
the nations. All progress of knowledge, government, society, is
progress of his truth, and a prophecy of the complete
establishment of his kingdom.

(_c_) With respect to his church triumphant, it is a kingdom of glory; he
rewards his redeemed people with the full revelation of himself, upon the
completion of his kingdom in the resurrection and the judgment.

_John 17:24_—“_Father, that which thou hast given me, I desire
that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may behold my
glory_”; _1 Pet. 3:21, 22_—“_Jesus Christ; who is on the right
hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and
powers being made subject unto him_”; _2 Pet. 1:11_—“_thus shall
be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ._” See Andrew Murray, With
Christ in the School of Prayer, preface, vi—“_Rev. 1:6_—‘_made us
to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father._’ ” Both
in the king and the priest, the chief thing is power, influence,
blessing. In the king, it is the power coming downward; in the
priest, it is the power rising upward, prevailing with God. As in
Christ, so in us, the kingly power is founded on the priestly:
_Heb. 7:25_—“_able to save to the uttermost, ... seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession_”.

Watts, New Apologetic, preface, ix—“We cannot have Christ as King
without having him also as Priest. It is as the Lamb that he sits
upon the throne in the Apocalypse; as the Lamb that he conducts
his conflict with the kings of the earth; and it is from the
throne of God on which the Lamb appears that the water of life
flows forth that carries refreshing throughout the Paradise of
God.”

Luther: “Now Christ reigns, not in visible, public manner, but
through the word, just as we see the sun through a cloud. We see
the light, but not the sun itself. But when the clouds are gone,
then we see at the same time both light and sun.” We may close our
consideration of Christ’s Kingship with two practical remarks: 1.
We never can think too much of the cross, but we may think too
little of the throne. 2. We can not have Christ as our Prophet or
our Priest, unless we take him also as our King. On Christ’s
Kingship, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:342-351; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 586 sq.; Garbett, Christ as Prophet, Priest,
and King, 2:243-438; J. M. Mason, Sermon on Messiah’s Throne, in
Works, 3:241-275.

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