As far as the Moral Influence Theory is concerned, This re- the adverse presumption raised by the history of opinion V<%,4% on this subject is overwhelming. The spiritual followers Pee of Christ have always lived a life the conscious principle of which was faith in a sin-expiating sacrifice. Socinians and Rationalists have believed in the Moral Influence Hypothesis when they have seen fit to believe anything.
CHAPTER XIX.
This review equally adverse to the Govern- mental Theory.
276 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
Let the doctrines be judged by their fruits, and by the seal of the Holy Ghost on the hearts of their respective professors.
Young says of the Evangelical Churches from the Reformation down to the present hour: “If there has been success anywhere in the spread of Christianity, if there has been manifest power, power for highest good, anywhere, it has been in connection with them. Un- deniably God has been in them and with them; and the Spirit of God has marvellously wrought, through them, for the conversion and moral regeneration of the world.”* Yet he continues a few paragraphs after: “That wild and daring transcendentalism which, in a greater or less degree, essentially affects evangelical theology at this hour, is not by any means the most fatal evil. The doctrine of satisfaction to divine justice is immeasurably worse in its moral tendency. . . . This, beyond all com- parison, 1s the deadliest error.” This is a_ sheer absurdity. The faith in the work of Christ as an expia- tion of guilt has been a constant element in the living Church. The partial prevalence of the doctrine advo- cated by Young has been a constant symptom of the decay of spiritual life and fruitfulness when these have reached the crisis of death. Young hates the doctrine of the satisfaction of justice. He will have none of it. But his will, like the Pope’s bull against the comet, is impotent, as well to expunge it from the page of history as from the page of revelation.
The adverse bearing of this historical review upon the position of those who advocate the Governmental Hypo- thesis is not less evident. The Governmental, as well as the Moral Theory, necessarily denies that the effect of Christ’s death was to expiate the guilt intrinsic in sin, or to propitiate the justice intrinsic in God. Both these
* Life and Light of Men, p. 467. t Ibid., p. 476.
HISTORY OF OPINION. 277
theories agree in making the direct and essential effect of caar7m the Atonement to be simply exemplary and moral—a “~~ display of principles, not a veritable exercise of divine attributes. On the contrary, the history proves beyond question, —1. That the one point held in common by all the people of God in all ages is precisely this, that like the function of the ancient priest and the virtue of the ancient sacrifice, the effect of Christ's death terminates, not on the sinner, nor on the universe, but on God. The simplest and constant form of the Confession is, that Christ, by his sacrifice, has expiated sin and propitiated God. This theory of Satisfaction, as thus generally stated, is the faith of the Greek and Roman, of the Lutheran and Reformed and Arminian Churches, in all their branches; and what is true of the Church to-day has been true of the Church from the beginning. 2. All the creeds of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches teach the full doctrine stated and advocated in this book ; and they can, by no amount of ingenuity, however able or unscrupulous, be explained away into even a plausible conformity with the characteristic positions of the Gov- ernmental Hypothesis. Nor can its advocates truly claim that while accepting and conserving all that is essential and valuable in the older faith of the Church, their doctrine is simply to be regarded as an “ improve- ment in theology,” in the line of legitimate progress. We believe in such progress. We thank God that it has been made by the Church in its comprehension of this very doctrine in the past. We acknowledge that there is both room and need for more such progress just here. We hope that the Spirit may soon lead us to more truth in this direction as in all others. But it is absurd to propose that as an improvement which essentially consists in the denial of the original and uniform faith of the Church in the premises,
OHAPTER XIX.
278 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
When Grotius, in his celebrated work, written pro- fessedly to defend the common doctrine of the Church from the attacks of the Socinians, first developed the Governmental Theory, and admitted that the Atonement was not designed to satisfy an immutable demand of the divine nature, but to produce a sin-deterring effect upon the universe, all saw that he had betrayed the very life of the cause he had professed to defend. Hven the great Arminian theologian, Limborch, saw clearly that this was so, and said, in criticising the work of Grotius, “that the
-gist of the matter in respect to the doctrine of the Atone-