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

idea that the death of Christ "was required to fortify the righteousness of God in the forgiveness of sin hefore other vorlds, it may comfort the disturbed feeling of some, if I add, that the institution of priesthood and sacrifice does appear, in certain intimations of Scripture, to be a transcendental and, possibly, m some qualified sense, a uniTcrsal mstitution. Undoubtedly, Christ is Word of the Fa- ther before all worlds ; and, in that sense, a medium of knowledge and approach to the Father. And as the principal idea of the priestly ofiSce is, that the priest is medium, or mediator, between souls and God ; the Word is thus the Eternal Priest of the universe — a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek ; mak- ing eternal intercession [eternally intervening or coming between] for us and all created minds. So he is figured, standing before the Father, as the unseen spiritual Majesty, to open the way and be, as it were, their advocate, to bring them near. In this view, he will manage for all according to their state and ne- cessity ; for the sinless and pure, if such there be, as sinless ; for sinners as sin- ners ; though by us, under sin, the ofiice of the priest is commonly supposed to be inherently related to sin ; because, in our case, it practically is and must be. But according to the more general conception, just suggested, the institution of a priesthood (including sacrifice where sacrifice is wanted) has its trancendental ground in the nature of God ; that is, in the Word, as the form, or visible glory of the Father." Compare Heb. vii. : 24-27 : " But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood; wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such a priest became us — who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up saceifice, first for his own sins, and then for the peo- ple's ; for this he did once, when he offered up himseljf." Heb. viii. : 3 : "For every high priest is ordained to offer gtfts and sacrifices ; wherefore it is of ne- cessity that this man have somewhat also to offee." Heb. x. : 12: "But this man, after he had offered one saceifice foe sins." [P. 218.] "But I have said that the expression of God, which is made in the sufferings of Christ, and which avails to our justification, is real and efficaciarus only in virtue of the fact that it is incidental (pp. 201-2), being what he sufi'ers not in the ostentation of suffering^ or having that as the direct object of his mission^, but what he suffers in his grand attempt to regenerate the world and reestab- lish the lost union of souls with the Divine nature." [P. 201.] God in Christ. " Once more, it is to be noticed, as a law of expres- sion, that when evil is endured simply and only for what it expresses, it expresses nothing. If a man wades out upon some mountain, in the snows of a wintry night, to carry food to a perishing family, then what he incurs of risk and suflfer- ing, being incidentally encountered, is an expression of charity. But if he calls upon us to observe his charity expressed in what he will suffer, and, waiting for a stormy night, goes forth on the same expedition to the mountain, he expresses nothing but ostentation. So if Christ comes into the world to teach, to cheer, to heal, to pour his sympathies into the bosom of all human sorrow, to assert the 39 The whole scheme of suffering in Christ, substituted directly for penal suffering in us, Is a bare assumption, justified by no Scripture authority whatever, [284 ; " Qod m Christ" 98-19. 201.] integrity of truth, and rebnke the ■wickedness of sin, in a word, to manifest the Eternal Life and bring it into a (juiokening union with the souls of our race, then to suffer incidentally, to die an ignominious and cruel death rather than depart from his heavenly errand, is to make an expressiou'of the Heart of God, which every human soul must feel. And this expression may avail to sanctify the law before us, even thouqh there be no abhorrence expressed in his sufferings. But, if Christ comes into the world invoking, as it were, the frown of God, and undertak- ing to suffer evil from, God, that he may express God's justice, or his abhorrence of sin, then he expresses nothing. The very laws of expression, if I understand them rightly, require that suffenng should be endured, not as purposed, or as evil taken up for the expression of it, but that the evil be a necessary incident en- countered pre the way to some end separate from expression — some truth, bene- faction, or work of love." [P. 285-6.] " If we choose to say that Christ came into membership with us, under the corporate law of evil in the race, and let the currents of penal causes roll over him in waves of temptation and suffering ; showing thus how immov- ably fixed the laws of retribution are, in the fact, that they will not stay the qualified action they have in our system, to spare even innocence when it comes in their way ; there is nothing incredible in this, if only it be said that Christ . put himself in their way for some benevolent end or reason, apart from the osten- tation of suffering, and that what he supers is no way penal in the experience ; save that the currents of causes under which he suffers are themselves penal, as re- lated organically to the sins of the race." [P. 284.] " Besides, I feel bound to say, yet more emphatically than before, that whole scheme of suffering in Christ, substituted directly for penal suffering in us, is a bare assumption, justified by no Scripture authority whatever." "God in Christ," [P. 198-9.] "In the second and more mitigated class of orthodox opinions, a very important and really true position is, at last, reached, viz., that the value of Christ 8 life and death is measured by what is therein expressed. Only it is needed, now, to go a step farther, investigating what he expresses, how or under what esthetic conditions the expression is made, and the object for which it is made — ^whether it be to express God's character, and bring the Eternal Life into visible evidence and social relation ; whether to sanctify and set in honor, before mankind, the broken law of God ; whether to bring God as a renovating power into union with our human nature ; whether, possibly, it be not to accom- plish all 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 exhibition of God's justice, or judicial abhorrence to sin. " The objections I have to this 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 forgive- ness without punishment, only by some equivalent expression of abhorrence — an assumption that is groundless and without consideration, as I may 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 do- ing it in a less painful degree ; that is suffering so much of evU as will suffice, considering the dignity of his person, to express the same amount of abhorrence to sin thjit 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. Ifffe could lay his frown 40 N^oTE. — Showmg more, fully that there was no need of an atonmg, saorifioe. Condemnation passed for sin, is simply being in a state of spiritual death ; [p. 288,] the penalty of the law consists in the fact that sin is a law of bad cansation; [p. 259,] so that subjectively to justify (to recover to actual righteousness), is for one moment, on the soul of innocence and virtue, Me must he no mch being as I have loved and worshipped Mucli 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 ? No govermenial reasons, I answer, can justify' even the admission of innocence intp a participation of frowns uud penal distritm- tions. 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 of sublimity ; to reveal the essential, eternal, unmitigable distinction it holds between innocence and sin, by de- claring that as under law andits distributions, it is everp imjpossible to suffer smj com- mutation, any the least confusion of places." [P. 201.] '"Thirdly, if Christ be himself, in tlie highest. and truest sense, the Eternal Life, God manifested in the flesh, then erery 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 says himself, that all power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth. He is, in fact, the embodiment, as he is the representation, of God and Divine government -j he must be taken, in all that he does, as doing 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 endui-ed, not out of the circle of Divine government, bxit in it. And thus we have a, government real- izing its penal distributions or their equivalents, that is, its justice, its significa- cations of abhorrence, wbolly within itself and apart from all terms of 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 witlout some uncomfortable suspicion of mistake in it ! [P. 288.] "The objeetive forensic justification is nothing, in fact, but a mode of conceiving the inward subjective deliverance. One is, in real truth, the other; just as condemnation, passed for sin, is a state of being, called the state of condemnation, or spiritual death." [P. 259.] "But remission again is another of the terms on our list. And this too the Hebrew worshiper holds in a form of thought wholly objective. It is an absolution promised on the part of God, and pronounced by the priest. Ask him now what effect or value this formal remission can have ? Perhaps it never occurred to him before, that his sin is a law of bad causation, a law of sin and death in his soul. And, if so, he is likely to be perplexed again, even worse than before. _ But he will gather np himself, at last, and say, ' God promised to give me remission, and clear me of my sin, and since he is faithful, I will trust him to make it, somehow, a reality in me. Nay more, I found as I went away from the sacrifice, that I was not under the power of sin as before ; I had a better con- science, a freer spirit of obedience, a new desire after Ood aad purity of life. Therefore! believe that my sin is somehow broken in its power, and that what I experience within answers to the remission, I sought.' "And BO, again, of the remission offered in Jesus Christ. Objective in form of thought, it has its reality in an internal absolution from the law of sin ; a rege- neration of the spirit in duty, love, and purity." 41