I REGARD the doctrine of the Atonement as the centre of doctrine. It is unquestionably the great theological problem of the present day. I do not see how it is possible for a man to adjust and define his religious system unless he has found satisfaction respecting this primal article of belief. It is to be observed in regard to the lavish criticism which has been devoted to this subject, that men have set up as an object of attack, not the doctrine, but a caricature of the doctrine; and have then argued, not against the doctrine, but against the caricature. I will set down certain considerations respecting the Atonement in relation to certain popular difficulties, knowing full well that I am treating the subject inadequately, and far from exhaustively, but at the same time believing that desultory attacks are sometimes best met by a desultory defence.

It would, indeed, I think, be difficult to present the subject in a very ordered and systematic manner if such an attempt were to imply that the doctrine itself could be reduced to a proposition on which the

110 WE ARE INCOMPETENT TO JUDGE THE DOCTRINE.

human mind could sit in judgment. The materials for such a judgment are not before us; for it belongs, as I think Butler somewhere points out, to events far in the past and far in the future: and where the human mind is met by such limitations, it best becomes the humility of a true thinker to abstain from the dogmatic negative to which scepticism might point. The true rule, as I have before indicated, is to satisfy the mind respecting the truth of a revelation; and if we have arrived at an affirmative, to accept what that revelation teaches. It would, indeed, be an argument against the reception of revelation, if it could be proved that its statements were contradictory to reason. But the common sense of mankind has long ago drawn the distinction between things that are above and things that are contrary to reason. Such a distinction indicates the province to which a discussion respecting the difficulties of the doctrine may be confined. We may take up the objections to the doctrine, and show that these objections break down; we may show that the difficulties of the doctrine can only be eliminated by the introduction of still greater difficulties; and that, so far as argument and analogy may serve us, these may be adduced as rather resting with our own way of thinking.

A philosopher, whom I shall still venture to call great, despite a recent remarkable attempt to discredit his teaching, has pointed out that no difficulty arises in theology which has not previously emerged in phi

losophy. We believe that the Atonement is the divine remedy for sin. If we sweep away the fact of the Atonement, the fact of sin is left undisturbed. The origin of evil is still left an insoluble problem. We are forced to make an election between doubt, unbelief, and bewildering speculation, and the clear, final, authoritative language of Holy Writ. We trace our original sin, as an inherent vice of the blood, to the primal lapse of our first ancestors. Just as the sea, however far inland its tidal waves are borne, retains that salt, bitter taste in each landlocked estuary or mountain bay, so in the extent of all humanity, wherever the human kind has reached, the corrupt tree has brought forth corrupt fruit, and it has not been found possible that the same fountain should issue both sweet waters and bitter. This may seem hard. One never ceases to hear the objection that this retributive process, extending through all time, clashes hardly with our feelings. Certainly there are many things which to our finite reason must always appear very hard. But analogy helps us here. We see here a law which pervades all life. The sins of the parent are visited upon the children. Hundreds suffer from hereditary madness, and thousands die from hereditary disease. We are born into estates of life, and amid circumstances and surroundings, not as we could have wished them to be, but as those who have gone before us have made them for us. No doctrine which social science could devise

112

THE MORAL SENSE.

would find an effective remedy for this. The deductions of any such science, if there is such a science, would only establish such a law, and assure us that it must permanently run its pitiless course. But here it is that revelation steps in, and satisfies even the poetical justice which we might demand. We have had a mighty wrong inflicted on us, and the mighty wrong is met by a mighty remedy. mighty remedy. The second Adam makes amends for the first. We have been the losers by the sin in which we had no actual share. We are immeasurably the gainers by an Atonement in which we have had no actual share. We are rescued from the despotism of an iron law. We have gained redress for the original wrong inflicted on humanity. Sin and death are heart-breaking problems: the Atonement will provide a solution; and if we sweep that away, they are left heart-breaking problems still.

An objection in limine is sometimes made when entering on the theological discussion, that the doctrine of the Atonement is contradictory to our moral sense, and does not obtain the ratification of our verifying faculty. Some years ago, in particular, a great deal of stress was laid upon this supposed opposition. Before inquiring whether such an opposition really exists, we should endeavour to arrive at an understanding respecting the nature of our moral sense. To act against conscience is wrong, but conscience itself is not always right. There is in Locke

sense.

VARIATIONS OF THE MORAL SENSE.

113

But

--and this is an authority to which our opponents will yield as much respect as they can ever pay to authority-a well-known passage, in which he gives an extraordinary collection of the vagaries which the unenlightened human conscience has committed. We even shudder at the conversations of Socrates and his companions, whose verifying faculty admitted much that public opinion in these days would brand with detestation. It would be possible to adduce states of society in which theft and adultery and murder have ceased to be reprobated by the moral These are of course extreme instances. those who attend to the history of opinion know well that this moral sense, which is to gauge deviations from absolute right, does itself indefinitely vary. It is not the same here and on the Continent; it is not the same now and a hundred years ago. Here it allows what it has disallowed, and there it has disallowed what it had allowed. Where, then, shall we find permanence amid these fluctuations? How shall we relegate this moral sense from the region of opinion into that of essential truth? The answer is, that this can be achieved only by that same revelation to which we owe the doctrine of the Atonement. The conscience only acts aright when it is enlightened and regulated by the Word of God. So have I heard of the comparison of the watch and the dial. The watch must from time to time be adjusted by the dial. If the watch is wrong, however excellent