This is at once very absurd and very dangerous, and none the less dangerous because of its absurdity. The present, above all other periods of human history, is intolerant of all vague, undetermined, and loosely-held views. Sharp, clearly-defined logic, and earnest faith, will hold the field at the last. Besides, these very men necessarily violate their own principle, showing that practically it serves only as a cover under which their hostility to the truth is disguised. It is plain enough that Coleridge held and taught, under all the cloud of his mysterious language, the old, meagre, and oft-dis- carded Moral Theory of the Atonement. The Rey. Sub- dean Garden, in the Tracts for Priests and People, makes it very plain that while his professed object is to main- tain the Atonement as a fact, while all human theories as to its nature are alike rejected, his real interest in the matter is to reject the principle which has been always professed by the Church in all its branches, that the direct and central design and effect of Christ’s death was to propitiate the principle of justice in the divine nature. The same is true in degree also in the advocates of the Governmental Theory. Its positions are possible only when vaguely and generally stated. When a strict account is asked as to what is meant by “a substitute for a penalty,” or as to the connection between the non- penal sufferings of an innocent person and the forgiveness of the unpunished sins of the guilty subjects of divine government, no answer is made ; and we venture to assert that upon their theory no answer is possible.
* See Tracts for Priests and People: Tract III., The Atonement as a Fact and as a Theory. By the Rey. Francis Garden, Sub-dean of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal.
INTRODUCTORY. 2]
In answer to both of these pleas of Rationalism, we cmaprer affirm that Christian doctrine has its ground in the in- —_ spired Scriptures alone. These contain the system of divine truth as a whole, as well as all the separate ele- ments of that system. The true system of Redemption is in the Scriptures, inseparable from, the facts, just as the true theory of astronomy has been from the creation with the stars in the sky, whether mankind read them aright or not. The theologian, like the astronomer, is nothing more than the interpreter, who observes the facts, who gradually reads the system in the facts, and who teaches to others precisely what he has read in the Book, neither more nor less. We believe that what is called the Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement i is as cer- tainly-and as demonstrably taught in the Scriptures as it is In any or in all the creeds of the Reformed Churches. The teachings of the Holy Scriptures, with respect to the precise nature of the Atonement, when brought together, are, as I show at the close of Chapter XII, as definite as any statement which can possibly be constructed in the use of human speech. Let us reverently remember the awful woe which the Holy Ghost denounces upon him who either ‘shall add anything unto” or “shall take away” aught from that which God has revealed in the Scriptures (Rev. xxii. 18, 19). It is certainly as impious, and perhaps more foolish, to refuse to see clearly what God has revealed clearly, as it is to attempt to understand in detail great undefined facts which God has seen fit to leave upon the verge of our horizon. We hear of some dapper preachers who claim that the age has outgrown doctrine. They have advanced around the circle to the place from which they started, and hope they are ready again to enter the kingdom of heaven like little children, as far as ignorance is concerned. Let it be remembered that systematic theology has its essence
CHAPTER I,
All con- troversy as to the Atone- ment to be deter- mined by Scripture.
Rational- istic ob- jections to plain teachings ‘of inspira- tion inad- missible.
Wherein the force of the argument consists.
22 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
simply in clear thinking and clear speaking on the sub- ject of that religion which is revealed in the Scriptures. A man can outgrow systematic theology, therefore, either by ceasing to be clear-headed, or by ceasing to be reli- gious, and in no other way. I suppose some escape in their haste by both ways at once.
3. In the third place, as to the conditions of the argument, I have to make three preliminary remarks.
(1.) I insist that, as the Gospel is wholly a matter of divine revelation, the answer to the question,— What did Christ do on earth in order to reconcile us to God ?—be sought exclusively in a full and fair induction from all the Scriptures teach upon the subject. From a survey of all the: matter revealed on the subject, what, in the judgment of a mind unprejudiced by theories, did the sacred writers intend us to believe? The result of such an examination, unmodified by philosophy or secular analogies, is alone, we insist, the true doctrine of the redemptive work of Christ.