the place of those by whom it had been incurred, one individual of infinite dignity dying in the stead of the multitude of his people (the shepherd for his sheep), is discarded and trodden under foot. In reference to this theory, it is sufficient here to remark, —
1. That it is a mere speculative, or philosophical, anthropological theory. It has no more authority than the thousands of specula- tions which the teeming mind of man has produced. Schleier- macher says that man is the f )rm in which the universal sj)irit comes to consciousness and individuality on this earth. These writers say that man is the form in which generic humanity is in- dividualized. Every philosophy has its own anthropology. It is evidently most unreasonable and presumptuous to found the expla- nation of a great Scriptural doctrine, which the people are bound to understand and receive, and on which they are required to rest their hope of salvation, upon a theory as to the nature of man, which has no divine authority, and which not one man in a thou- sand, perhaps not one in hundreds of thousands, believes or ever has believed. The self-confidence and self-exaltation which such a course implies, can hardly be the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
2. The theory itself is unintelligible. The phrases " universal man," and " the whole of humanity," as here used, have no mean- ing. To say that " humanity itself was nailed to the cross," con- veys no rational idea. By a universal man might be meant a uni- versal genius, or a man who represents all mankind as Adam did. But this is expressly repudiated. By " a universal man," as dis- tinguished from an individual man, is intended a man who includes the whole of humanity in himself. Though this might be said of Adam when he stood absolutely alone, before the creation of Eve, yet it cannot be said of any one of a multitude of men. A univer- sal man would be a man who included in himself all human per- sons ; an idea as monstrous as the modern doctrine of " the all- personality of God."
In the language of the Church, to assume a nature is to assume a substance with its essential attributes and properties. Through all ages in the Church the words <^uo-is, ova-Ca, substantia, and natura, have, in relation to this subject, been used interchangeably. When it is said that the Logos assumed our nature, it is meant that He took into personal union with Himself a substance or essence having the same essential properties which constitute us men. But He did not assume the whole of that substance or essence. He assumed the whole of humanity in the sense of assuming all the attributes of humanity. He took upon Him all that was necessary to constitute
5o6 PART in. Ch. VU. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
Him " very man '* as He was from eternity " very God." This, however, is not what these writers mean. They say He took upon Him the wliole of humanity so as to be, not an individual, but the universal man. This is wliat some of the first of German minds have pronounced to be Unsinn., i. e., meaningless. Even if the idea of substance, although recognized by the Bible, the Church, and mankind, be discarded, and humanity, or human nature, be defined as a life, or organic force, or aggregate of certain forces, the case is not altered. A universal man would still be a man who had in himself to the exclusion of all others, the totality of that life or of those forces. There is no conceivable sense in which Christ had in Himself the whole of humanity, when millions of other men existed aroimd Him. This whole theory, therefore, which is set up as antagonistic to the Church doctrine of satisfaction, rests on an unintelligible, or meaningless proposition. It is no new thing in the history of the human mind that even great men should deceive themselves with words, and take mystic phrases, or vague imagin- ings for definite ideas.
3. There is a moral or ethical impossibility, as well as a meta- physical one, involved in this theory. The doctrine is, that in assuming human nature Christ assumed the guilt attaching to the sins humanity had committed. He became responsible for those sins ; and was bound to bear the penalty they had incurred. Nev- ertheless human nature as it existed in his person was guiltless and absolutely pure. This, to our apprehensions, is an impossibility. Guilt and sin can be predicated only of a person. This if not a self-evident, is, at least, a universally admitted truth. Only a person is a rational agent. It is only to persons that responsibility, guilt, or moral character can attach. Human nature apart from human persons cannot act, and therefore cannot contract guilt, or be re- sponsible. Christ assumed a rational soul which had never existed as a person, and could not be responsible on the ground of its na- ture for the sins of other men. Unless guilt and sin be essential attributes or properties of human nature, Christ did not assume guilt by assuming that nature. If guilt and sin cannot be predicated of Christ's person, they cannot by possibility be predicated of his human nature. The whole theory, therefore, which denies that Christ as a divine person clothed in a nature like our own, assumed the guilt of our sins by imputation of what did not belong to Him, and sustained the penalty which we had incurred, and makes that denial on the ground that the innocent cannot bear the sins of the guilty ; that God could not regard Him as sin, unless He was in