You will often hear it said that God was angry with man, and that Christ turned away His wrath. Holy Scripture tells us that " God so loved the world." He is angry with sin, but " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." And again we sometimes hear it said that the wrath of God was poured out upon His Son. But Jesus Christ tells us, " There- fore my Father loveth me, because I lay down my life for the sheep." So that His sacrifice called forth afresh as it were the very love of God which had been His from all eternity.
M In a particular district of France there is a school for poor boys who have neither father nor mother to care for them, and who run homeless about the streets. It is a very good school, and the boys who enter it are cared for and helped to become good men. But sometimes bad boys get in, and boys who will not try to be better. A boy of this sort one day stabbed another in the arm with a knife. Now in that school they have two very wonderful rules : 1st. Bad boys, when they do mischief, are tried by the scholars, not by the masters. And the sentence the other boys passed on this cruel lad was, that he should be kept three weeks in a dark cell, and fed on bread and water. 2nd. But in this school substitutes are allowed in punishments. Any boy may come forward and say he will bear the punishment to which an evil-doer has been sentenced. So, when the sentence was pronounced, the question was asked whether any boy was willing to bear this punishment. And, to the surprise of all the school, the boy whose arm had been stabbed stepped forward and said, " I will bear it in his stead." And that was agreed to, but the master said, " The criminal must take the bread and water to the cell." So the boy whose arm had been stabbed went into the cell to bear the punishment. And the boy who stabbed him carried the bread and water three times a-day to the cell. He went through his task six days. But then he broke down ; three times every day to see the pale face of the boy he had stabbed in prison for him made him see how cruel he had been, and he came to the master and insisted on bearing the rest of the punishment himself.^
' A. Maeleod, The Child Jesut, p. 78.
ISAIAH 319
IF When we speak of punishment, what do we mean ? What do we mean by saying that our Lord was punished for our trans- gressions ? I do not think that the expression is altogether an applicable one. I was reading the other day a lecture delivered by the Eev. Joseph Cook in Boston, in America, in which he says, " Guilt or obligation to satisfy the demands of a violated law may be removed when the author of the law substitutes his own volun- tary chastisement for our punishment. When such a substitution is made, the highest possible motives of loyalty to that rule are brought to bear upon the rebellious subject. If any great arrange- ment on that principle has been made by the Father, Eedeemer, and Sanctifier of the Universe, that arrangement meets with exactness the deepest want of men. It is the highest possible dissuasive from the love of sin ; it is the only possible deliverance from the guilt of sin, in the sense, not of personal blameworthi- ness, but of obligation to satisfy the violated law which says I ought." And then he gives this striking illustration of meeting the objection that Christ being innocent was punished. He says, " There was a New England schoolmaster — I saw his death mentioned in the papers the other day — who made it a rule that if a pupil violated any law of the school the master should substitut'"^. his own voluntary sacrificial chastisement for that pupil's p'riishment." The pupils were quite willing, and for that reason the measure was effective among them. " One day," he said, " I called before me a pupil, nine or ten years of age, who had violated an important regulation of the school. All the pupils were looking on, and they knew what the rule of the school was. I put the ruler into the hand of the offending pupil, I extended my hand, I told him to strike. The instant the boy saw my extended hand, and heard my command to strike, I saw the struggle begin in his face. A new light sprang up in his countenance, a new nature seemed to be rising within him. I kept my hand extended, and the school was in tears. The boy struck once, and he himself burst into tears. I constantly watched his face, and it seemed in a bath of fire, giving him a new nature. The boy seemed transformed by the idea that I should take the chastisement in place of his punishment. He went back to his seat, and ever after was one of the most docile of all the pupils in the school, although at first he had been one of the rudest." Have we not here a glimpse of the principle on which the atonement operates ? In the example was the master punished ? Strictly speaking, no. Was he guilty ? Certainly not. Was the personal demerit of the pupil transferred to the master ? No. What was it that happened ? He voluntarily accepted the chastisement instead of the pupil's punishment,