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are partakers of this common woe, heirs of this universal heritage of evil. It matters not whether we give to these common sufferings the name of punishment; certainly they stand in the closest connection with it as the natural consequences of sin. But there is a deeper element in punishment. The wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The inmost core and essence of punishment is the divine displeasure resting upon the guilty soul as a personal burden and finding its seat in the reproaches and disquietude of a guilty conscience. It is this that turns the fairest scenes of earth into a prison, and of itself would "make a hell of heaven." It is true that the natural law of which we have just spoken is itself an energizing of the divine displeasure in the world, a kind of objective or externalized wrath of God. But this is the displeasure of a present God, whose Spirit meets the sinful human spirit in a personal energy of disapproval, lashing the conscience with the whips of remorse. We pass from it to the last sense in which the term punishment is employed. The punishment of consequence and the punishment of personal divine displeasure find their full meaning in that final separation from God which is the result of the last judgment. Future or eternal punishment, the second death, marks the highest reach of the tide of divine wrath. It is the doom which befalls the soul that deliberately and definitively resists the strivings of the Holy Spirit.

We have here, then, three, not to say four, kinds of punishment or elements in punishment. There is first the punishment of natural consequence, to which we may perhaps add the common or race punishment, though it is an open question whether the latter is properly so designated. Then we have the essential punishment in the personal displeasure of God witnessed to by conscience. Finally, there is future punishment. Now from which of these elements of punishment does the atonement deliver the believer? Not from sufferings and death. Christ says to his disciples, "In the world ye shall have tribulation." Without a miracle God could not make it otherwise. The law of nature must take its course. The drunkard does not, by reformation, procure deliverance from his enfeebled constitution. The character that has been deteriorated by evil passions and vile imaginings is not made of a sudden pure by the acceptance of Christ; it will be the struggle and pain of the new life to overcome these evils by the help of the Holy Spirit. The death of Christ does not deliver us from the necessity of physical death. Suffering and remaining

sin are enemies that will be fully overcome only in the sequel of the Christian life; the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and that not till Christ's second coming. It is true that these things lose their character as punishment, and become the chastisement of a loving Father. But however the name may be changed, the things themselves are not removed out of our way. Neither does the atonement, directly at least, deliver us from future punishment. The question may fairly be raised whether those who actually become believers on Christ have ever at any time rested under the doom of eternal punishment, since the New Testament seems to lay that extreme sentence only upon those who have finally and irremediably rejected Christ. But waiving that question, eternal punishment lies in the far future, beyond death and the judgment, and the atonement, when accepted by faith, does its work in the present. Deliverance from future punishment may be a certain sequence of the atonement for those who believe, but like the heavenly life it comes hereafter, and not now, as the proximate effect of the atonement should come.

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There remains the second use of the term. And in this we find the true, and the only true, application of the word "punishment to the proximate object of the atonement. That which is deepest, most essential, most personal, in punishment is removed by the atonement. The divine displeasure is withdrawn. It no longer stands in the way of the divine love. The Father smiles upon his child. There is peace with God. The relation of guilt gives way to reconciliation. This is the meaning of the forgiveness of sins. It is not remission of outward penalty or of future doom. It is the removal of the divine displeasure and the peace of a pardoned soul. Conscience no longer raises its condemning voice. If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things. It is easy to see how, when this central core of punishment is gone, the consequences of old sin lose their penal character and are gradually worked off and finally made to disappear by the new life of God's Spirit. Even death is no longer death, for the sting of death is sin, unforgiven sin; and by the resurrection of Christ our resurrection is assured.

There is, then, one sense and one only in which the proximate object of the atonement is to deliver us from punishment. But how seldom in the discussions of this subject is the fact clearly recognized. All the old theories and most of the modern ones by ambiguity and lack of clear thought here bring their statements into a well-nigh hopeless obscurity. And the question arises, whether

inasmuch as this is not the most common and popular conception of punishment, and inasmuch as the Scriptures themselves do not ordinarily use that term in describing it, it would not be wiser to drop the phraseology altogether, and use the simpler and more intelligible theological terms, forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, and the like. But whatever we do, let us when we argue theologically be sure of the sense in which we employ our terms.

IV. Another most important line of inquiry concerns the conception of atonement itself. With regard to the term there need and ought to be no difference of opinion, in spite of the ambiguity with which it is used by men of the school of Schleiermacher and Maurice. Undoubtedly atonement was originally synonymous with reconciliation, as the ordinarily accepted etymology suggests; but both in popular usage and in theology it has lost that meaning and come to signify something leading the way to reconciliation. There seems to be no excuse for using it in any other sense. The theological doctrine of the atonement may be false, but its falsity does not lie in a misapplication of the word atonement.

What is needed here is a deeper grounding in Scripture and natural ethics of the nature and need of atonement. In its common and simplest meaning, atonement implies some wrong done by one person to another, and a state of estrangement or alienation resulting from that wrong; and the atonement itself is some reparation given, some amends made, some satisfaction rendered, some making good of the wrong furnished, by the wrong-doer to the wronged. This atonement opens the way for reconciliation. It affords the basis for and the justification of reconciliation. It is not the same as punishment, and therefore is to be distinguished from expiation, which always involves the idea of a penalty suffered. Atonement is made by the wrong-doer himself, or in his name; punishment is inflicted upon him. Atonement opens the way for reconciliation; punishment leaves the estrangement just Atonement derives its value from the right disposition of the heart; punishment implies an obdurate and rebellious heart. In many cases atonement and punishment altogether exclude each other, so that if there has been a full atonement for wrong there need be no punishment, punishment only becoming necessary where atonement has failed, or a mild and disciplinary punishment being employed as a motive to atonement. There is, however, this remarkable relation between the two to be noted, that often where a just punishment is borne patiently and in full acknowledgment of its justice, with sorrow for the wrong-doing

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and earnest purpose of betterment, this bearing of punishment may itself become the highest kind of atonement. A little observation, however, shows that in this case it is not the punishment which atones, but the spirit with which it is borne, and that by the very fact of thus being borne the punishment loses its character as punishment and becomes simply chastisement or discipline.

But the standing objection to the doctrine of the atonement consists in the denial of its necessity as a precondition of forgiveness or reconciliation. It is claimed that it is the high prerogative of love to furnish forgiveness freely and without reparation, that no attribute is higher in man or in God than that mercy which accepts and restores the returning sinner and asks no satisfaction save that of an answering love. The familiar words of the great dramatist, which seem almost to breathe the spirit of inspiration, are quoted:

"The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath."

We are told of the forgiveness the parent accords to the penitent child, and are pointed to the Saviour's sublime parable of the Prodigal Son. This objection cannot be brushed away with a simple denial. It needs a careful and most patient hearing. If it be true, the doctrine of an objective atonement disappears or is retained merely verbally, while in fact a wholly different formula is substituted for it. If we are to meet this objection, we must show by a careful examination of ethical facts that atonement is the universal law of the moral universe, wherever it has been entered by sin, in the relations of men to each other, in the family, society, the state; in the relations of man to God; and in the wider relations of other intelligent beings to each other and to God. Now, in order to do this, it will be necessary to go deeper down into the meaning of atonement than we ordinarily go. If it be chiefly a matter of outward actions, such as a giving of satisfaction through the performance of some penance or the display of some outward sorrow or humiliation, or if it be made merely the bearing of suffering, as suffering, to satisfy some assumed sense of vindictive justice in the one wronged, the objectors are undoubtedly in the right. As between their view and the low and external notion of atonement which prevails in many minds and is characteristic of heathen religions and formal Christianity, we should have but little hesitation in choosing. But if it can be shown that there is a higher and vastly profounder view of atonement, the whole state of

the question is changed. If it be true that atonement is primarily a matter of the heart, including an inward making good of wrong, an acknowledgment of sin, a recognition of justly incurred displeasure, a purpose of better things, a reparation in feeling and will for the injury done, then we may say without qualification, and prove our assertion by abundant examples, that atonement is a necessity of God's moral universe. The parent does not forgive his child who has broken the law of the home until the little one has made atonement in sorrow and acknowledgment of wrong. The obstinate, hardened heart he cannot forgive. In spite of all formal remission of punishment, there remains estrangement and separation; and a forgiveness that is worth anything must be a reconciliation. If in the legal sphere this is less evident, it is because the law of society has to do chiefly with outward acts and cannot penetrate to the purpose of the heart. And yet even here, in provisions for mercy, and mitigations of punishment, and amnesties of the executive, there is abundant evidence that a true atonement may take the place of punishment. And the Bible, in all its parts, teaches no other truth. God does not forgive out of hand. Even in the parable of the Prodigal Son, there is atonement in the confession of sin, the recognition of unworthiness, the purpose of seeking pardon, the desire to become as a hired servant. That men in their relations to God are represented as able to make a sufficient atonement I do not assert, but it seems plain that the principle is everywhere maintained, however imperfectly carried out in practice. And this, altogether apart from the Old Testament sacrificial system, which derives its whole significance from this fundamental and far-reaching law. Moreover, in the so-called religions of nature the existence of sacrificial rites and of ideas and practices involving the conception of atonement is a proof how deep-seated in human nature this principle is, even though it may lead, apart from divine revelation, to misconceptions and abuses.

In truth, a deeper study and better understanding of this subject of atonement will show that those theories which confine the efficacy of Christ's death to its effect upon the hearts of men are superficial and untrue to nature. It is the universal law that atonement is necessary to reconciliation, - that law which sacrificially expressed is, "Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." Between man and man atonement is possible, at least in part. Between man and God it is impossible, because man cannot and will not render it, — will not, because apart from

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