Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

.

them. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate.' But if not, hear what the Lord saith, Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded ; . . . . I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh' (Prov. i. 24, 26). Your son will be a witness against you, and condemn you for leading him into sin. Your uncle will condemn you, for he warned you on the brink of an awful eternity. Your conscience will condemn you. Do not despise the advice of an old friend who has been praying for you for thirty years. I remain, your praying friend, I. PYKE.”

Mr. Pyke adds, "As he lived so he died. May we not say, 'So I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy?' I followed three of these men to their Christless burial :

'Wrapt in a Christless shroud,

They sleep the Christless sleep;
Above, the eternal cloud,

Beneath, the fiery deep!'"

Such zeal for the Lord of Hosts, aroused the hatred of the godless heart. But the men who cast out his name 66 for him in the time of affliction and death.

as evil" were eager to send

Mrs. Durston writes: "He was always ready to visit the sick and dying; and throughout the forty-two years during which I knew him, I found that those who scoffed at him in health were the first to send for him in sickness." To the sick-bed he was always a welcome visitor. When accompanying him in those visits I have witnessed his power and influence over the minds of the afflicted. He was the spiritual adviser of the sick and dying of all classes and creeds in his neighbourhood for many years. On "May 7th, 1858," he writes: "I called to see a sick man. Little hope of life. I prayed for more than half an hour and no answer. All dark. The heavens as brass. I left the house and walked up and down praying to the Lord. I returned and continued in prayer for twenty minutes. The sick man struck me with great violence, but I felt God heard prayer (1 John v. 14, 15). I left him. About three A.M. he cried ‘Lord, have mercy on me!' This was the first prayer he ever uttered. He said, he felt when he struck me that he was going to hell as fast as a ball shot from the mouth of a cannon. God has restored him, and he is now a member of Christ's Church."

(To be concluded.)

391

THE ATONEMENT.*

MR. DALE AND HIS CRITICS.

THE works mentioned below deal with the same great theme. The former has already won a deserved celebrity as the third of the present series of the "Congregational Lecture." The latter is an attempt to reply to Mr. Dale so far as he formulates a theory of the Atonement. The books are of very unequal merit. The Lecture is distinguished by a massive strength, which renders it well worthy to rank beside the earlier Lectures of the series, and to take a permanent place in the theological literature of England. Mr. Mercer's treatise is marked by novelty and ingenuity, but is little more than an instance of the vagaries of the human mind when it trusts to itself in exploring the realm of truth. A large portion of the Lecture consists of an appeal to the Word of God. Mr. Mercer does not follow this only safe course, save in one instance which we may notice by-and-by. We commend his discretion in this particular, for the theory of the Atonement to which his own fertile imagination has given birth, can find no countenance whatever in - the Scriptures.

"The Atonement." By the Rev. R. W. Dale, M.A. Fifth Edition. 1876. Hodder and Stoughton.

"Why the Cross of Christ?" By Mercer. John Snow and Co. 1876.

We warmly welcome a new edition of this admirable work, in a form which renders it accessible to a larger number of readers. The plan and style are alike grand, bold and appropriate to the theme, which is profoundly and honestly treated, with rare felicity and force of statement. The emotional accompaniment is tender, reverential and manly, and the controversial tone marked by a masterly moderation. Mr. Dale indeed sometimes goes to the extreme of concession to his opponents, and once or twice takes too low ground, as in his reply to Robertson, p. 47. He evinces however, throughout, penetrative insight and realising power; and he rightly addresses himself to the thought of the nineteenth century. The degree and variety of power displayed in this book is so startlingly in advance of the lecturer's former works, that it can scarcely be attributed solely to a natural growth of intellect. We can only account for it as resulting from the less speculative spirit, the profounder reverence for Revelation, which has happily and most obviously come upon the writer. Mr. Dale does his genius great injustice when he trusts its stout-mailed massiveness to the quagmire of theological speculation. On the terra firma of Scripture he plants a giant's foot. We are, however, more sorry than surprised to find some of the tenacious clay still cleaving to his armour. It seems a pity, for instance, that such a man as Mr. Dale should condescend to the delusive cant against doctrine; for what, after all, is his "theory of the Atonement," but his doctrine of the Atonement? Mr. Dale, like any old-fashioned theologian, ascertains and formulates the teaching of Christ and His Apostles. If this is theory, then the whole of orthodox theology is theory; and theory is only another word for dogma. We could hav▾ wished him to have been less adventurous in some few expressions. He could scarcely be more explicit as to the finality of the Atonement as the means of human salvation. The book is a noble production.-ED.

Mr. Dale expresses his sense of the importance of this great doctrine by endorsing the words of Francis Turretin: "If it be rejected or in any way impaired, the whole structure of the Christian faith must sink into decay and ruin." Admitting the difficulties surrounding his subject he asserts:

"It is scarcely within our power to remain neutral in the presence of conflicting theories of the Atonement. We must decide whether the death of Christ has a direct relation to the remission of sins, or whether it was simply a great appeal of Divine love to the human race-' God's method of conquering the human heart.'"

Again with regard to the terms used by the sacred writers as descriptive of the death of Christ : "No man can admit the conception of a propitiation into his mind without having some theory of an atonement, and possibly through want of reflection, one inflicting deep dishonour upon the Divine government." The object of these Lectures is clearly stated—“ To show that there is a direct relation between the death of Christ and the remission of sins, and to investigate the principles and grounds of that relation to establish a fact, and then to attempt the construction of a theory.” In endeavouring to establish the fact, that the death of Christ is the objective ground of the remission of sins, Mr. Dale has not resorted to ordinary methods of proof. He has not been content with collecting a number of proof-texts and submitting each to close analysis: his mode is less direct, but to our mind much more satisfactory. He observes:

"No catena of quotations can adequately represent the overwhelming evidence that the Apostles believed in the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If all the 'prooftexts' usually alleged from the Apostolic Epistles were cancelled, the proof would remain almost as strong as before . . . . . What is true of the Divinity of our Lord, is also true of His Atonement for human sin."

His aim is, therefore, to show that this grand truth penetrates the entire substance of the Apostles' theological and ethical teaching, and is the very root of their religious life. The like may be affirmed, though in a less degree, of the Gospels; therefore Mr. Dale devotes two lectures to the "History of our Lord Jesus Christ, in relation to the fact of the Atonement," and the "Testimony of our Lord" to the same great truth.

At the very outset the Lecturer frankly states that in these Lectures, the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is assumed. Those who deny this great truth can never feel the significance of the facts of our Saviour's history. Being the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person, "far more of God is revealed in what He was, and in what He did, than in what He taught." In opposition to men like the late F. W. Robertson, who speak as if our Saviour's sole mission were to preach the Gospel, Mr. Dale contends that Christ came in order that there might be a Gospel to preach. The exceptional importance and significance of our Lord's sufferings and death, appear in the elaborate account

given of them in all the four Evangelists. In this they did but follow the line of our Saviour's own thought. His death was ever present to His mind, and constantly referred to as necessary to the accomplishment of His mission. The awful agony of the garden requires explanation. This terrible scene Mr. Dale believes to be inexplicable until we behold our Lord on the cross, and consider the mysterious sorrow expressed in the cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" One of our own theologians, by whom too little has been written, has observed: "Any attempt to reach the full significancy of these words.. the loud, but uncomplaining cry of Him Who on the cross was both Victim and Victorwere as vain as for a spectator of the agony to hope to pierce with his vision, or to scatter by his breath, the darkness that was over all the land from the sixth hour to the ninth."

Mr. Dale does not pretend to reach the full significance of these words, but simply refuses to accept any explanation which implies that they do not represent the actual truth of our Lord's position. If they teach anything they do teach that the fellowship with His Father, which had been intimate and unbroken, was now interrupted :

"The light of the Divine presence is lost. He is left in awful isolation. . . This is not martyrdom. What is it? He has never sinned; He is the Son of God, and inherits the infinite love of the Father. In the hour of His anguish He is consummating the work which is dearest to the Father's heart; but He endures that loss of fellowship with the Divine blessedness, that exile from the joys of God's presence, which is the effect of the Divine wrath in the case of the impenitent. . . . . He has come to make known to sinful men the love of God, and He Himself, who has never sinned, is forsaken of God. . . . . The Son of God is not only the victim of human malignity in the very extremity of His woe He is deprived of all Divine consolation: He declares that God has forsaken Him."

:

Taking these words in their clear "unqualified meaning," Mr. Dale believes the explanation to be found of the fact that our Lord's mind was filled with the thought of His death from the very first, and that its approach filled Him with dismay; and cannot escape the conclusion that He is involved in this deep and dreadful darkness by the sins of the race whose nature He has assumed; and if the dread with which He anticipated His death, and the Divine desertion which made His death so awful, are pass into doctrine, He can conceive of no other form in which they can appear than that which they assume in the Apostolic Epistles: He" delivered for our offences;" He "died for our sins;"" suffered the just for the unjust;" was "made a curse for us."

to

The close of this lecture is well worthy of quotation :

[ocr errors]

was

"If this is not the explanation of His desertion on the Cross, then the Cross, instead of declaring that God has not forsaken the human race, notwithstanding all its crimes, seems to be an appalling testimony to all nations and to all centuries, that not even the purest goodness can secure for One Who has assumed our nature the strength and the peace which come from the perpetual manifestation of God's presence and love. Instead of revealing the infinite love of God refusing to forsake

those who have sinned, it is an awful proof that He may forsake in the hour of their utmost and sorest need those who have perfectly loved and perfectly obeyed Him. Either the Death of Christ was the Atonement for human sin, or else it fills me with terror and despair."

...

Mr. Mercer criticizes at considerable length Mr. Dale's view of this cry from the Cross. He asserts that this interpretation "makes God into the cruel murderer of His only-begotten, His dearly beloved Son. . pulls down the old cross that wicked men erected, and sets up a new one erected by the Father." Yet he goes as far as Mr. Dale when he states that Christ dies because "His heart is broken. Death comes upon

Him from within as well as from without, and He dies as much from the loss of the sense of God's presence as from the exhaustion of crucifixion.” Mr. Mercer's own admissions show that his charges against Mr. Dale are absurd, while his theory does not relieve the case of its difficulties. He believes that our Lord really suffered the loss of the sense of God's presence, and that He died as much from that as from the exhaustion of crucifixion. But he differs from Mr. Dale as to the cause: his view being that this sense of desertion was occasioned by Christ's "being overpowered with a sense of the awful guilt of the race who were torturing Him." From the testimony of the Scriptures we know that God "freely delivered up" His Son into the hands of these torturers, foreseeing all they would do. May we remind Mr. Mercer that the great question which forms the title to his treatise, "Why the Cross of Christ ?" is not to be answered by endeavouring to fix a horrible stigma on a doctrine held by an opponent in common with the Apostles.

In Lecture III. of Mr. Dale's work the inquiry is made, "Whether our Lord gave any account of His death which at all explains the mysterious facts already considered?" On this point it is affirmed:

"We are not left to discover His inner thought concerning His death from obscure allusions, from parables of doubtful interpretation, or from illustrations derived from Jewish institutions, about whose precise significance there might be interminable controversy."

The institution of the Lord's Supper, on the night preceding His Passion, is dwelt upon. Our Lord declared that it was

""for the remission of sins' that He was about to die. Other ends might be accomplished by His death, but at a time when we might reasonably suppose that His mind would be filled with the chief and direct objects of His Passion, this is the only one of which He speaks. . . . . In an indirect way it might be said that His teaching from first to last-all that He did, all that He endured-was intended to secure for us the remission of sins. But never, even incidentally-never, even by impli cation-does our Lord affirm that it was for this that He wrought miracles, or revealed truth, or submitted to the sorrows and pains which preceded the Cross. He does affirm that it was for the remission of sins that He died. He must have believed that the relation between His death and the remission of sins is different in kind from that which exists between His teaching or His example and the same great blessing."

Other words of our Lord concerning His death are referred to in

« AnteriorContinuar »