96 effort is excluded, and by a mysterious act of the theological' mind, a double transformation is effected, through which Christ is made sin, and the unrighteousness of man freely exchanged for the "righteousness" of God 97. $5. CHRISTIAN FORMS. Christianity was no abrupt transition. Its idea and shape had their root in Judaism. It has two aspects; the moral conception, which, as eternally good and true, is not so much its own peculiarity as an essential part of all civilization; and secondly, the special dogmas and forms which making up its accidental expression or clothing, have never ceased to accompany its development, though often threatening to obscure or supersede the vital meaning connected with them. It was as natural that Jesus should use the current ideas and symbols of his time as that he should speak its language. A different style of expression and thought would have been as unsuited to his audience as to himself. He adopted the received theocratic image of a "kingdom;" and as Messianic theory was from the first a virtual confession that God's real kingdom was not at the time identical with their own theocracy, so in the Messianic scheme of Jesus every element of a political nature was for obvious reasons expunged or postponed, and his kingdom was emphatically declared to be "not of this world." Of the particular gospel symbols connected with cotemporary traditions, such as the sacred "Stone," the "Shepherd," the "Light," the "Branch," the "Water of Life," and the "Bread from Heaven," some have been already noticed, some 95 Rom. iii. 27. 97 2 Cor. v. 21. 96 Rom. x. 10. Comp. Wettstein to Matt. iii. 2. Targum to Mic. iv. 7. "Revelabitur regnum cælorum in Monte Zion." The consummation of Magian religion was a similar "kingdom of Ormuzd." will recur again. But such illustrations could not solve the great problem, why did God reveal himself in a corrupt and perishable world? Why was man, the noblest of creation, allowed to fall, to become at enmity with his Maker and himself; and how, so fallen, is he to regain his lost estate? He cannot feel satisfied unless harmony be restored; and to effect the restoration he is not content with an inward operation of or on the mind, he wants an outward act, sign, or guarantee, appreciable by eye or ear, such as was demanded by the believing Abraham' as well as the unbelieving Zacharias. Approximation, progress, are disheartening, insipid; we wish to clench our triumph, to cut short our labour, to find a by-path to the goal. It is certain that the very fact which to the Apostles as well as to other Jews had at first been an almost insurmountable "stumbling-block," namely, the death of Jesus, became afterwards, in part through a revival of the ancient theory of sacrifice, the most cherished assurance of their hope. But with equal certainty may it be affirmed that the answer ultimately given by Christianity to these grand problems of religious inquiry was not fully completed or "revealed" until after the death of its founder. It was then that in their official character as witnesses of the resurrection," the apostles seem to have first propounded, in accordance with ancient and almost extinct ideas, the doctrine of his atoning and triumphant death, an event which they found scripture authority for presuming to have been part of God's mysterious and eternal scheme for the redemption and salvation of a guilty world. We do not find in the three first gospels any distinct announcements by Jesus of his propitiatory death which can be relied on as authentic. The allusions to it ascribed to him are few, and the scripture passages 2 Gen. xv. 8. Comp. Matt. xvi. 23. Mark viii. 33. 3 Luke i. 20. Comp. 1 Cor. i. 18. 23. Luke xxiv. 48. Acts i. 22; ii. 32; x. 41. Rom. xvi. 25. 1 Cor. ii. 7. Eph. iii. 5. 9. Col. 26. now commonly understood as indicating it, are rarely, if ever, quoted by him. Even the emphatic 53rd of Isaiah, by which afterwards his followers strove ineffectually to remove the great Jewish “stumbling-block," receives in the gospels quite a different turn". There existed the notion of atonement, but not of an atoning Messiah. Jesus may have eventually been influenced by the prevailing idea of meritorious suffering, but certainly did not deliberately plan his own death. He came to save sinners by turning them to repentance, not to supersede their exertions by his own vicarious act, or by undergoing at their hands a wanton martyrdom to aggravate their guilt. The prophets, though allowing expiatory value to the suffering of the righteous, on the whole discourage the idea of vicarious atonement. Disregarding forms, they plead for sincerity and moral purity, especially advocating the natural law of personal retribution for personal offence. The teaching of Jesus was the same. His object was not form, but amendment. He preached the expiation by repentance preceding or accompanying the Messiah, whose final triumph was to be signalized by a judgment on the guilty, described by Malachi as an avenging fire 1, but whose career might also be compared to a purifying fountain cleansing Jerusalem from sin". Jesus probably foresaw that his death would effectually secure the spiritualism of his doctrine by severing it unmistakeably and for ever from the idea of a worldly Messiah. It was this event which more than anything opened the tardy understandings of his followers to "know the scriptures." 12. During his life they were blind to its import, and were far from anticipating advantage from their Master's death. If Jesus really and clearly foreshowed to them not his death only, but God's eter Matt. viii. 17. In the second century Justin M. (Tryph. ch. 68 sq.) makes a Jew admit the Messianic application of this passage, yet not the death of Jesus by crucifixion. Gfrörer, Urchrist. ii. 266 sq. Epist. Barnab. ch. v. * Matt. xxiii. 35. 10 Mal. iii. 2, 3; iv. 1. 12 Luke xxiv. 32. 45. • Luke i. 75. 11 Zech. xiii. 1. nal purpose of reconciling the world to himself by it, how can it be credited that they forsook and denied him at the very moment when he was voluntarily offering himself to fulfil this transcendant act of love; or how reconcile with such supposed declaration their apparent ignorance, after as well as before it was made, of his purpose and of the nature of his kingdom 13? The same or greater difficulty involves the traditions which would make Simeon" or John the Baptist's to have foreseen the plan of atonement; since neither John himself, nor his disciples who went over to Jesus, appear afterwards to have themselves known what they were before supposed to have taught. And if the aim of Jesus was to show by precept and example the possibility of exact fulfilment of God's law, why should he have deliberately planned an inconsistent resource the necessity of which was in fact not felt until St. Paul proved the inefficacy of the law for justification, especially when the disciples' conduct and even his own language show that the plan, if conceived, must have been reserved a mysterious secret within his own mind". He said, "I go to prepare a place for you;" "I go because it is written of me, and that may rise again to enter my Father's glory;" once only, "I go to be a ransom for the sins of the world;" so that it seems more reasonable to take the allusions which, if made, were overlooked or misunderstood, as instances of "prolepsis," the narrative being only the form given to a subjective fact in the writer's mind, the fact, that is, of a well-known cotemporary doctrine which, when there were no longer any means of testing the correctness of the assertion, it seemed almost impossible to ascribe to any other than to Jesus. I 19 18 13 Comp. Matt. xvi. 23; xix. 27, 28; xxvi. 31. 70. Mark ix. 32. Luke xviii. 34; xxiv. 21. 14 Luke ii. 35. 16 Matt. xi. 3. 18 Luke xviii. 31; xxiv. 26. 15 John i. 29. 17 Comp. Luke ix. 45; xviii. 34. 19 Comp. Matt. xx. 28. 20 So of the last supper, and the doctrines of the fourth Gospel. $ 6. THEORY OF SACRIFICIAL ATONEMENT. Sacrifice was a symbol of many meanings. The association or communion with God aimed at in religion might be sought in as many ways as there are varieties of feeling or mental development. Religion takes its expression from common usage, and the first sacrifices would seem to have been gratulatory oblations to a personified God, composed of the usual food of man, vegetable or animal', accompanied with water or wine'; they were either burned in fire, the element supposed most nearly to resemble the divine nature, or were set out as shew-bread, as a "lectisternium" or table of the sun, enabling the gods to satisfy their appetites or to regale their nostrils*. Every phase of human life was refined through connection with religion, the altar, though often blood-stained, was a powerful instrument of civilization, and every meal or banquet was ennobled by becoming a holy rite submitted to regulation. The relation to the Supreme Being implied in the earliest oblations or sacrificial banquets, in the hecatomb feasts of Homer, and the meat and drink-offerings of the Hebrews, was of the simplest kind. The sacrifice was "Jehovah's bread," and the most savoury parts of the victim were appropriated to the Being who, even in Ezekiel, com Porphyr. Abstin. ii. 5. 28. 33. Ewald, Anhang to Geschichte, vol. ii. p. 27. The juice of a wild plant, the milk and honey of shepherds, and the flesh of animals, seem to have been used successively. Lassen, Ind. Ant. i. 791. 2 Paus. i. 26. 5. 1 Sam. vii. 6. Judg. vi. 20. 3 Lev. iii. 11; ix. 2, 3. Deut. xxxii. 38. Max. Tyr. viii. 4. Judg. vi. 21. 4 Gen. viii. 21. Lev. i. 9. 13. Numb. xv. 7. Amos v. 21. Iliad, i. 483; iv. 48; viii. 549. Aristoph. Birds, 1515. 5 Comp. 1 Sam. xiv. 34. • Comp. Ewald, Geschichte, Anhang. to vol. ii. pp. 57. 134. Lev. xvii. 3. In after times when the only legitimate altar was at Jerusalem the regulation was necessarily altered. Deut. xii. 15; xv. 19. 7 Ewald, ub. sup. p. 31. 8 Ezek. xliv. 7. 15. |