Farewell to the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Conn. (bound with other addresses)

ment lay his frown (or penal suffering,) upon the soul of the innocent, He can be no such Being as the author of the book in question has loved and worshiped. — [pp. 198-201.] No governmental reasons can justify such a substitution of the innocent for the guilty. If the great Redeemer, in the excess of His goodness, consents freely to offer Himself to the Father, or to God, to receive the penal woes, or some suf- ficient part of the penal woes, in his own person ; and if the Father accepts the sacrifice, then the Divine government, in- stead of clearing itself, assumes the double ignominy, first, of letting the guilty go, and secondly, of accepting the sufferings soul must feel. And this expression may avail to sanctify the law before us, even though there be no abhorrence expressed in his sufferings. But, if Christ comes into the world, invoking, as it were, the frown of God, and undertaking to suffer evil as evil, that he may express God's justice, or His ABHORRENCE OF SIN, then ho cxfiresses nothing. The very laws of expres- sion, if I understand them rightly, require that suffering should be endured, not as suffering, or as evil taken up for the expression of it, but that the evil be a necessary incident encountered on the way, to some end separate from expression some truth, benefaction, or work of love." [P. 198-201.] " In the second and more mitigated class of orthodox opin- ions, a very importantand really true position is, at last, reached, viz : — that the value of Christ's life and death is measured by what is therein express- ed. Only it is needed, now, to go a step farther, investigating what he ex- presses — whether, possibly, it be not rather to accomplish these ends, and that, too, without any imposition or endurance of evil in the penal form of evil, any suffering or pain which is undertaken for effect, as being a direct ex- hibition oy God's justice, or juijicial abhorrence to sin." " The objections I have to that more mitigated theory, are these : — First, it assumes that, as punishment expresses the abhorrence of God to sin , or what is the same, his justice, he can sustain his law and lay a ground of for- giveness without punishment, only by some equivalent expression of abhor- rence — an assumption that is groundless and without ctinBidera,tion, as Imay cause to appear in another place. " Secondly, this latter seems to accord with the former view in supposing that Christ suffers evil as evil, or as a penal visitation of God's justice, only doing it in a less painful degree ; that is, suffering so much of evil as will suffice, considering the dignity of his person, to express the same amount of abhorrence to sin, that would be expressed by the eternal punishment of all mankind. I confess my inability to see how an innocent being could ever be set, even for one moment, in an attitude of displeasure under God. If He could lay His frown for one moment on the soul of innocence and virtue. He must be no such being as I have loved and worshiped. Much less can I imagine that He should lay it on the head of one whose nature is itself co- equal Deity. Does any one say that He will do it for public governmental reasons? JVo governmental reasons, I answer, can justify even the admis- sion of innocence into a participation of .frowns and penal distributions. If consenting innocence says:—' Let the blow, fall on me,' precisely there is it for a government to prove its justice, even to the point cf sublimity : to reveal the essen- tial, eternal, unmitigahh distinction it holds between imuocence and sin, by declaring that under law and its distributions, it is even impossible to suffer any com- mutation, any the least confusion of places. 17 of the innocent. — [p. 196.] It did not please the Father to braise him, and to put him to grief. — [pp. 228, 229, 230.] When Christ cried out upon the cross, the Father had not for- saken Him. — [p. 230.] Christ died only incidentally, with no [P. 200.] — "According to the supposition, the problem here is to produce an expression of abhorrence to sm, throxtgh the sufferings of Christ, iw PLACE of another, through the sufferings of the guilty. Now, the truth of the latter expression consists in the fact, that there is an abhorrence in God to be expressed. But there is no such abhorrence in God toward Christ, and, therefore, if the external expression of Christ's sufferings has no cor- respondent feelings to be expressed, where lies' the truth of the expression ? And if the frown of God lies upon his soul, as we often hear, in the gatden and on the cross, how can the frown of God, falling on the soul of itmocence, express any truth, or any feelings of justice ?" [P. 201.,] " Thirdly, if dJirist Jie himself, in the highest and truest sense, the Eternal Life, God manifested in the flesh, then every expression of justice or abhorrence to sin, which is made by his death, as a mere endurance of evil, is in- volved in yet greater obscurity and confusion." — " He is, in fact, the embodiment, as he is the representation of God and divine Government ; he must be taken , in all that he does, as something which is properly referable to God. No theory of three metaphysical natures, called persons, in God, can at all vary this truth. The transactions of Christ, must still be taken as transactions of God. The frown, then, if it be said to be of God, is quite as truly on God. The expression of justice or abhorrence is made by sufferings that are en- dured, not out of the circle of divine government, but in it. And thus we have a government realizing its penal distributions or their equivalents ; that is, ifs_;^s*M;e, its significations of abhorrence, wholly within itself and apart from all terms ojT relation, save as the subjects, so called, are to be spectators ! Whatever speculations we may hold, in regard to modes of expression, can we "hold such a view of divine government without some uncomfortable suspifiiou of mistake in it !" [P. 196.] — " A,nd if the great Redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, consents, freely offtos himself to the Father, or to God, to receive the penal woes, or some sufficient part of the penal woes of the world, in his own per- son, what does it signify, when that offer is accepted, but that God will have his modicum of suffering somehow — if he lets the guilty go, will yet satis- fy himself out of the innocent ? In which the divine government, instead cf aearing itself, assumes the double ignominy, first of letting the guilty go, and secondly of accepting the sufferings of innocence." [P. 229.] — "But this, it will be apprehended by some, destroys the whole import of such scenes as the agony o/nd the crucifixion. It may require a different construction of these scenes, but I hope it will not be too hastily concluded that a different construction robs them of their sacred import and power. It is itoagined by many, that what is called ' the agony' of Jesus, was caus- ed by the penal attitude in which he found himself before the Father, and the consequent sense of the iesertion he felt." — [p. 230.] — " It was not that the sonl of the sufferer was racked, by a sense of the withdratvment of the Father. How could the Father vnthdraw from, so great excellence and purity, under so great a burden of sorrow ? — what end could it serve thus to falsify his character ? — It is also re- presented, by Luke, that an angel is sent to strengthen and support him — sent by thfi Father to suppc^rt him itnder his own displeasure ! Sometimes the ex- clamation, which he uttered afterwards, on the cross, is ihade to assist the interpretation of the agony also — ' My God ! my God ! why hast thou forsak- en me !' But this is only the language of intense suffering, an interjection, so to Speak, of anguish." — " To take this language of passion, this common outcry of distress, and hold it in a cool, historic^ or dogmatic sense, is to violate all dignified laws of interpretation." 2 thought of a penal quality in his death — [pp. 219, 228, 229.] 01' of any divine abhorrence of sin exhibited by sufferings laid upon his person. — [pp. 236, 237.J Everything done by Him was done for expression before us, and thus for effect in us :~ [pp. 236, 237,] only that he might enter into human feelings by his incarnate charities and sufferings, to re engage the world's love, and to re-unite the world, as free, to the Eternal life — [p. 189,] to set before us the value which God puts upon law, by the' import of His life taken in the simple aspect of a free, faithful, loving obedience. — [p. 226, 227.] His work was the [Pp. 228, 229.] — " This suflFering [of Christ,] is expressive, becausfe it is in- cidental to an effort to reveal the love of God." — " All this, you perceive, vnthout anything said of apenal quality, in the sufferings of Christ. No evil is laid upon him as evil, hy the Father, to be endured retrtbutively. He only suffers the ills that lie in his way, and endures the violence that human malignity and cru- elty heap on his head." — [See this passage cited more at length, under article " Concerning the Law."] [Pp. 236,237.] — "The effect depends, «oi o« any real altar-ceremony in his death, butit depends, 'artistically speaking, in the expressive power of the fact that the Incarnate Word, appearing in humanity, and having a ministry for the reconciliation of men to God, even goes to such a pitch cf devotion, as to yield up his life to it, and allow the blood Of his mysterious person to redden our polluted earth." — " My doctrine is summarily tbis^-that, excluding all thoughts of a penal quality in the life and death of Christ, or of any divine abhor- rence to sin, exhibited by sufferings laid upon his ^erson-'-excluding points like these, and regarding everything done by him as done for expression before us, and thus for effect in us, he does produce an impression in our minds of the essen- tial sanctity of God's law and character, which it was needfal to produce, and without which any proclamation of pardon would be dangerous, any attempt to subdue and reconcile us to God, ineffectual. Meantime, it may comport some to add, that he does by implication, or inferentially, express in all that he does the pro&undest abhorrence to sin ; for if, he will endure so much to re-sanctify his law and renew us in the spirit of it, how intensely signified is the abhorrence of his nature to the transgression of his law — more intensely than it would be by the punishment even of us all !"