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

Showing that though the doctrine of the vicarious atonement of Christ is absurd, even the simplest form of absurdity, and though if it were true, it would indicate in God the confusion or loss of all moral distinctions, yet God has set forth the work of Christ under that form, and intends to have sinners believe it to be true, and so to receive it in simple faith ; and they so believing are justified and sanctified. Ministers of the Gospel must preach this doctrine and endeavor to make men believe it, even if they themselves regard it as untrue. Though there is absurdity in the thought that Christ bears the sinners penalty ; [See 228, 229, under Sec. 1,] and though such a scheme is necessarily insignificant, the simplest form of absurdity, and indicates in G-od (if it were true), the confusion or loss of all moral distinctions ; [See 2Y1, under Sec. l.J yet God offers Christ to us under this form ; " a form which as- serted historically would be untrue." " He calls the death of Christ a sacrifice, an ofi^ering, a jpropitiation ; declares the re- mission of sins in his blood; represents him as bearing the sins of manhood in a way of vicarious svhsiiinition ; calls him the Lamb of Ood that taketh cmay the sins of the world. And then he invites us to come and exercise faith in him as being all these, and so a complete salvation." [241 .J So the Christian minister must preach [24T, 242-3] whe- ther he believes it or not. [332, compared with 242-3. Also, [P. 241.] "To giTe us now the secret force of his plan, or to set us in a con- dition to receive the grace intended, he takes np the historic matter of Christ's life and death just described, and offers it to us under a form that was.not in the facts themselyes, taken simply as facts ; a form which, asserted historically, ■would even be untrue ; but which, taken as representing a certain mysterious interior force in the facts, is profoundly true and real He calls the death of Christ a sacrifice, an offering, a propitiation ; declares the remission of sins in his blood; represents him as bearing the sins of mankind in a way of vicarious sub- stitution ; calls him the Lamb of God that taJceth away the sins of the world. And then he invites us to come and exercise faith in him, as being all these, and so a complete salvation." [P. 24Y.] "To accomplish which, with the greatest certainty and effect, and to bring us into the fittest and most transcendent relationship of peace with his holy government, it is necessary that Christ, or the given historic matter of his 45 God in Christ, 2Y1.J So the sinner must believe ; [see 242-3] and when he hangs himself in faith upon Christ as his altar of peace, trusting in his blood for the remission of sins, the faith he exercises will unite him with the person of the Savior, and will be found to have carried a total subjective change and renovation, [245-6, 255.] In this manner the doctrine of Im- life and death, should be set before m in the objective mystic forms of the altar — an offering, a sacrifice rendered up to God, a propitiation for our sins." [P. 242.] "I take ths ^gaie oi propitiatiorL Thus, &od is declared to have sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. In what sense a propitiation? Ill such a sense, I answer, as a Hebrew, accustomed to oiler his propitiatory sa- crifice for sin, would find in the figure, taken as a figure ; such a sense, in other words, as the force of the analogy would carry. Wtat then is the feeling or thought he has, when he comes to oifer his propitiatory sacrifice upon the altar ? Oomprehensively, it is this ; that he is here to propitiate God. His soul is bur- dened by his sin. God is angry. He wants peace. He comes, therefore, with his offering, to propitiate or reconcile God, and obtain absolution or the remission of his sins. " Tell him, then, that Christ is offered once for all, as a propitiation for sin; call upon him to come arid believe in Christ as being a mjtfficient and everlasting pro- pitiation ; aad^ he will conceive, accepting the form of his thought as being the truth itself, that Christ is said to have propitiated God, or made him propitious to sinners ; turned away Go^s wrath ; pacified him ; or, perhaps, reconciled him." " This, taken as speculative theologio doctrine, would be what I have called the objective view. It calls upon a lost world to come and rest their salvation upon the sacrifice of Jems ; "declaring that he has smoothed away the righteous anger of Gody brought in peace and pardon, a.Ti& provided- a free justification for us, by satisfying, in our stead, the righteous demands of God against us." [P. 332.1 " Xou have seen, as the result of my exposition, that while the views I have published will lead, in their practical adoption, to no such diversity in preaching as can properly disturb, the peace and religious comfort of our churches, tiiey are also as remote as they need be, from asserting any point that is danger- ously heretical. , [P. 245.] "This then is the real force of the old rite of sacrifice. If now it be declared, once more, that God hath sent his Son to be a propitiation for the sins of the world, it will be found, in like manner, that while the form of the thought is objective, the real chanse is subjective ; not a chalige in God, but a change rather in the sinner himself; so that when he comes to kapg himself in faith upon Christ as his altar of peace, trusting in his blood for the remission of sins, the faith he exercises, uniting him, as it will, to the person and the spirit of his Savior, will be found to have carried a total subjective change and reno- vation of his Kfe; and the peace he looked for will come through a reconciliation of his own disobedient and evil nature to God." [P, 255,] "Avoiding both errors, the true evangelism goes to Christ, in per- fect simplicity, to believe in him as the propitiation, the sin offering, the expia- tory sacrifice, the blood of remission ; talcing these objective farms according to their most natural power and expression, to hang itself on them as the altar of peace and forgiveness. Self is forgotten. God is embraced as another name for peace. And the soul, breathing out her contrition by the altar against which her faith is leaning, feels a change transpire witliin. She is free. In the name of Clirist she lives. "God in Christ." [P. 2*71.] " An interesting question remains, which I can- only reply to just far enough to save from misapprehension, viz., how, ought Christ to be preached? Not, certainly, as a theory, norinthehalfseholastiomannerin which J 46 putation, -which is an absurdity, " gets its proper validity, and enters even as a necessary element into the practical economy of the Christian life, [333 ;] for the doctrine of Christ as a propitiation for the sins of the world is to be discarded as un- true." [245-6 compared with 247.] Sec. ni. Showing that speculative untruths, told with the design ofmnMng them believed as true, if told for a good end, become substan- tial verities, even more so than the truth itself ; while the truth if told in certain cases, would become inoperative, and so sink at once into the worst abortion and poorest lie con- ceiveable. If asked where is the reality of this view of the atone- ment ? what is it but a figment, having no real substance or value ? it may be replied, precisely contrary to this, though to be discarded as untrue, [see 247,] it is more eflSciently and powerfully true than the truth itself, [248.] Thus it is no hare here exhibited the Christian doctrine. I only thinli it mil add greatly to the comfort and true self-understanding of the preacher in his work, i/ he has, in his own mind, some such solution as this. Meantime, he is to preach much aa the Scrip- tures themselves speak, blending the two views of Christ together. Sometimes he will be more in one, and sometimes more in the other. Probably the philo- sophic, or subjective view may be allowed to come into a somewhat more preva- lent use, among a cultivated, philosophic people, and in a philosophic age of the world. But it must never exclude and displace the sacrificial or ritual view ; for even the Christian philosopher himself will need often to go hack to this holy altar of feeling, and hang there,' trusting in Christ's offering ; there to rest himself in the quietness of faith, getting away from his care and reflection, and his troublesome self-culture, to be cared for, and clothed with a righteousness not his own." [P. 333.] "For the latter dismisses, under sentence of ' absurdity,' all those conceptions of imputation which figure so largely in the teachings of the Re- formers, and even constitute the staple of their doctrine ; while I, coinciding in the speculative absurdity of imputation, undertake also to show how these objec- tive conceptions get their proper validity, and enter, even as necessary elements, into the practical economy of the Christian life." "'' [P. 245.] "And thus it will be evident that the declaration of Christ as a propitiation for the sins oftlie world, is one, at the root, with the declaration that Ood is in Cfirist reconciling the world unto himself." [P. 247.] ".^^nd it is sufficiently accurate to say that the former, representa- tively taken, is the latter. It is not said, as in the theologically objective view just described and discarded, that God is, literally speaking, appeased by an effect wrought in him." [P. 248.] "But where is the reality then, it may be asked, of this represen- 47 mere fiction if we say that God is propitiated -when he is not ; but a most real truth, for it serves the real and true uses of the mind, [251-2 ;] " for not even truth is a valid interest apart from salvation, or the uses of the soul," [334.] Though the ob- jective form of the doctrine of atonement is untrue, there is an advantage in making men believe it, while the subjective form, though the real truth, would be ineflScacious ; just as it would be inefficacious in Dr. B.'s view, to tell the real truth concerning the efficacy of prayer ; in which if a man only tries to pray on the principle to which the truth in the case would lead him, he will sink at once into the worst abortion and poorest lie conceivable, [248 compared with 252-3.] So with the Hebrew worshiper, he thinks he comes to propitiate God, [253,] and so God would have him think, [see 241, 257,] tatively objectire view ! What solidity has it ? What is it but a figment, have ing no real substance or value ? "Precisely contrary to this, it is far more efficient and more powerfully true and closer to our wants, than the other. The most impotent, unreal, and ineffi- cacious of all forms of thought, are commonly subjective." * See all the citations under atonement, in which " the other," the subjective view, is set forth as the truth, while the objective view of the atonement is dis- carded [p. 247] as untrue and absurd, [p. 271.] See also God in Christ, p. 268. "Krst, we have what may be called the Protestant form, which takes the rituahstic side of the Gospel, the objective side, turns it into dogma, and reasserts it as a theoretic or theologio truth. And then, though it be no lon- ger a truth, the form of a truth, and, so far, a divine power lingers in it" See page 23 of " Remonstrance and Complaint."