BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. III. JANUARY, 1863.-No. 13.

ARTICLE I.

ATONEMENT.

WHOEVER diminishes this great central doctrine, corrupts the whole gospel, dishonors God, and injures the world. Rejecting some of its facts necessitates perversion of all the other resultant doctrines; whatever affects its entire integrity, affects the whole religious and experimental system. Atonement which is not in all respects real, which has not a basis of actual expiation and complete satisfaction, attributes to the moral Governor the taint of acting a part, makes justification a sham, and varnishes over the rotten native character of man. This may not be intended or seen for a time; but the injury inflicted upon the religious system and its workings will be none the less certain. Disease on the vital organs, though unseen and unfelt at first, inevitably brings on chilliness and feebleness to the limbs, and general disorder. This being the great central truth, error here necessarily saps the whole structure of religion, and is found to be the radical defect in all false churches. Indeed, every erroneous system can be traced, historically as well as logically, back to false views of the atonement.

As with miracles, and the whole subject of the supernatural, there is a divine depth in the atonement which the unsubmissive, and even the partially submissive, heart of man is continually tempted so to bridge over and explain away, as to bring

God's thoughts and God's ways down to man's, and make the heavens not much if any higher than the earth. This struggle between unsubordinated reason, and the more literal and exact, and so more rational interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, has been raging through all the ecclesiastical ages. The constant effort to correct and establish the church in the great fundamental principles of Redemption, is easily traced back through Edwards, Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Paul, Jesus Christ, Isaiah, and Samuel to Moses.

It is this fatal bias of the heart to give a looser and more accommodating interpretation to Scripture, and a lower view of Inspiration, that opens the Pandora box of evils upon the religious world. As with "The Two Taylors," (see page 3 of vol. ii. of this Review,) many have thought it a light thing to say substantially, "in the interpretation of which (the word of God) we ought not to admit anything contradictory to the commonsense and understanding of mankind." "We must not do violence to both common sense and sound philosophy, by giving to the language of the Scriptures a meaning which both forbid."

"These are enough to show that the mere form of expression decides nothing on the point before us, and that we are left to the decisions of common-sense and sound reason." Dr. John Smalley also says, "How is this difficulty" (full satisfaction for sin) to be removed? I answer; just as other difficulties are removed into which we are led by following the allusions and metaphors of Scripture too closely." Would Strauss or Parker ask more than that common-sense and sound philosophy should give the Scriptures a secondary place?

The inspired Record, fairly and faithfully interpreted, must be our reliance, since common-sense and reason, uninstructed and ungoverned by revelation, have ever proved as contradictory and unreliable as the responses of the heathen oracles. "In religion, reason makes no real discoveries except as she walks in the clear light of divine revelation. The use of reason in religion is to enlarge our minds to the amplitude of truth; but the abuse of reason is more common which would contract truth to the narrowness of our understanding." The opinions and theories of the greatest and best men should never be the ultimate question. They are of value only as showing how they read

the Scriptures whose hearts and minds were most in sympathy with God, and under the experience and power of the gospel. But this should be sufficient to secure for them a candid hearing, and to shield them from the flings of ridicule. What we are specially to guard against is, the influence of theories which are the product of mere understanding, which will be found, in the end, to be in conflict with both the moral instincts and christian experience of men. On this cardinal doctrine of atonement, the systems of intellect and reason which have been devised from time to time by learned men and narrow schools, by their enfeebling effect upon all the doctrines and practice of religion, have done immense mischief in unsettling the faith of christians, and causing many to stumble. For though they are sure to be rejected by the heart of the church, as discordant with the devotional emotions and language of God's people in all ages and countries, yet they will be continually returning and making their appeals to the church as improvements in theology. It is found necessary that they should be met and refuted in every age, and in all their new and varying phases.

It will not, therefore, be regarded as an unworthy aim to state clearly, and establish, the true Scripture view of the atonement; and indicate some of the steps in the scale downward from it towards acknowledged infidelity. In this number of the Review we shall have space for only the former part of our aim the true Scripture view of the atonement.

The atonement is represented in the Scriptures to be the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ as the ground and basis on which sinners may be reconciled to God. Its effect is to change the relations of God towards the guilty. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed;' "Isa. liii. 5. "Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus; Rom. iii. 24-26. "Without shedding of blood is no remission;" Heb. ix. 22.

"Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. iii. 11. "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts iv. 12.

The Hebrew word, translated atonement, literally signifies a covering. It is the word used for village, and hamlet, as being a covering or shelter to the inhabitants. It is the word used for the Mercy Seat in the Tabernacle, as covering the inexorable Law, over which the cherubim spread their wings, with their faces towards the centre, where was God's seat of compassion, and towards which the Israelitish worshippers were to pray. In Gen. xxxii. 20, and in Ezek. xvi. 63, the word is rendered appease and pacify, i. e. to make propitious. In Ps. xxxii. 1, it is rendered covered, with reference to sin. So also in Levit. xvi. 30, it is rendered atonement, as a satisfaction for the cleansing of a person. In Ex. xxi. 30, and Num. xxxv. 31, it it rendered ransom and satisfaction, referring to the sinners being shielded or protected from punishment. Tracing the word from the Hebrew into the Greek translation of the Old Testament by the seventy, we find it rendered (iλaσμòs) propitiation, or expiation, as in Num. v. 8. And it is an important fact, that the apostles, who wrote in Greek, make use of the same word when speaking of the sacrifice of Christ. "And he is the propitiation (iaopòs) for our sins." 1 John ii. 2. And again: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (iλaoμòs) for our sins." 1 John iv. 10. Here, then, we find the same word applied to the sacrifice of Christ, which had been used in the Septuagint to denote the sacrifices of animals under the Mosaic economy; and as, manifestly, taking the place of the Hebrew, rendered atonement or covering. Thus it is made plain, that all that the Scriptures affirm respecting the design and effect of the Jewish sacrifices, is met and fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ; and that Christ's sacrifice is a real and proper sacrifice; the only real and efficacious offering for sin. They prefigured his sacrifice, and ended with it. If any one thing was thoroughly wrought into the mind of the Israelitish nation it was that sacrifice was necessary to placate the divine wrath. If the victim was not offered, and in the full and proper manner, death must fall upon the sinner

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