As the law of God is the basis of his moral government, as a knowledge of the breadth and spirituality of that law is the knowledge of the nature and the extent of our moral relations and obligations, so is the atonement to the remedial system, which was made necessary by violation of law.
The atonement is more than a gospel doctrine; it is the doctrine of the gospel itself; the essence of all gospel doctrines, and that which gives life and power to every gospel truth.
The Bible doctrine of the atonement of Christ has received much opposition from those whose hearts were never touched by the power of divine truth, and who, evidently, never seriously considered the necessity which gave rise to it, nor the principles on which it is based and which it maintains. The objections urged against it are two-fold, namely, that it is contrary to reason and to justice. On the first point, it is claimed that the Bible itself is unnecessary; that nature affords us all the light that we need; and that the Bible and reason do not agree. On the second, it is urged that the Christian system is a system of license, and leads to immorality.
The object of this writing is to meet these objections; to vindicate the teachings of the Bible, and to show that a written revelation is but the supply of an acknowledged want, and its gift is only conformity to the demands of the plainest and simplest principles of government; and to show that reason is not opposed to the true doctrine of the atonement, but that it leads to it; that a co-incidence of strict justice and mercy demands it. And the principles, upon which revelation and the atonement are based are so universally recognized that conscience and reason require that they be universally received.
1. It cannot be admitted that nature affords us all the light we need, without doing violence to both our convictions and our reason. Nature, as says the psalmist, “declares the glory of God,” and may thus arouse us to feelings of devotion; but nature cannot guide us in our devotions; she does not inform us how to please and worship the Creator. The Bible and nature never come in conflict; but the Bible leads into a field of truth where nature makes no attempt to follow. We attach no blame to nature because it does not perform the office of a written revelation. It was not designed for such a purpose. When we have learned all that we can from nature, we find beyond that a plain necessity for a written revelation. This point needs to be carefully considered.
The present is a mixed state of good and evil. Confined in our views to the present state, and to observation, or to mere reason, without a written revelation, it is impossible to vindicate the justice of the controlling power, whether that power be called God or nature. Virtue is often trampled in the dust, and ignominiously perishes in its representatives. Vice is exalted on high, triumphs over justice and right, and its very grave is decorated with flowers and honored with a monument. In the operations of nature, there is no discrimination manifested, and without discrimination there can be no conformity to justice. True, we see many exhibitions of benevolence, but we see also many things that cannot be reconciled with it. The righteous and the wicked, the just and the unjust, the innocent and the guilty, the aged and the little child, alike share the bounties of Providence, and together fall by the pestilence, or sink beneath some sweeping destruction. These facts have troubled the minds of philosophers and caused short-sighted philanthropists to be faint of heart.
Reflecting on these things, some have presumed to deny the existence of a supreme, intelligent Being, and they ascribe everything to the indiscriminating laws of nature. Having arrived at this conclusion, they seem all at once to be gratified with the result, and proceed to lavish encomiums on nature, and award to her as much praise as if she never suffered the innocent to be tortured nor the guilty to escape. With nature we find no fault; but we must find fault with the position of her worshipers, who, in the name of reason, accept the most unreasonable conclusions. The laws of nature answer their purposes; but this class of would-be philosophers endeavor to make them answer a purpose for which they were never designed.
What shall we understand by the phrase, laws of nature? It can be used only in two senses: 1. As meaning the laws which nature has made for the regulations of her own operations. But it is absurd to use it so, for nature never made a law. Nature cannot deliberate and plan; she does not possess the knowledge required to devise means adapted to various ends. Or, if she made her own laws, she must have existed before they were made. How then were her operations regulated or controlled? Surely, no man will claim for nature so much as such a use of the phrase implies. All must admit that nature did not make the laws, and that the expression can only refer, 2. To the laws which the Supreme Being has made for the government of nature. He who made nature subjected her to certain laws; and it does seem strange that men will reject belief in a Supreme Being as unreasonable and absurd, and then proceed to clothe nature with the wisdom and power, and all the attributes, which such a Being must necessarily possess!
The laws of nature do not meet the requirements of justice, and cannot be the foundation of a government over intelligent creatures.
They present no standard of right, and are therefore no fit model by which to shape human conduct. As lovers of the most expansive benevolence, we may strive to imitate nature when she spreads abroad her bounties—her precious fruits and golden grain. But again she withholds these, and famine is the dire result. Shall we imitate nature in the desolations of the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the pestilence? Shall we indiscriminately spread ruin and destruction around us, involving alike the innocent and the guilty, the gray-headed and the prattling child? All answer, No. But each hand that is raised to check such a mad career practically acknowledges that nature, which is so blindly worshiped by many, presents to us no example worthy of our imitation.
Why is it that the laws of nature do not satisfy the aspirations of man? Why do we not accept them as our standard of action? It is because they are destitute of morality. We cannot trace one moral element in their framework or execution. He who studies them intelligently must be convinced that they are designed solely for a natural system; not for a moral system. Hence, they have no penalties, but only consequences; and these consequences are uniform, so that the operations of nature present an unbroken series of causes and effects, the results being the same whether issuing upon a responsible or irresponsible object, regarding no distinction of moral good or evil.
We cannot accept merely natural laws as the complete basis of government, because man has aspirations rising above those laws—which reject them as a judicial system. In other words, there is implanted in man a sense of justice, or convictions of right, to which he finds no counterpart in nature. These convictions are on a moral basis. This sense of justice is erected in the human mind as a tribunal, a judgment-seat, whereat we determine the nature and desert of actions. And before this tribunal we always arraign the actions of intelligent agents, but never the operations of nature. This is true of all men; and it shows that all, whatever their theories may be, do in fact and in practice make a proper distinction between moral and natural laws.
The prime distinction between moral and natural law is this: the first has respect to intention; the other has not. Fire will burn47and water will drown us whether we fall into them accidentally or rush into them willfully. The little child, who is yet unconscious of any intention of good or ill, suffers as certainly and as keenly on putting its hand into the fire as the man of mature mind who does the same thing presumptuously. Should a man maliciously set fire to his neighbor’s house, and a child playfully and without intention of wrong, do the same thing, all would blame the one, but not the other. And were the judge in administering law to visit the same penalty upon the man and the child because the actions and results were the same, all would cry out against such a perversion of justice. Thus all do recognize the difference between moral and natural law, and with great unanimity they judge the actions of moral agents according to their intentions.
But the operations of natural law cannot thus be judged; and its consequences, often miscalled penalties, have no regard whatever to the claims of justice. As before said, the child is as certainly burned in the fire as the man; and further, if the man were to hold the hand of the child in the fire, he alone would do wrong, while the child alone would suffer the pain of the burn consequent upon the wrong. This proves that the sufferings from the burning cannot be a penalty, but is a consequence only, and that justice is not honored in the operations of nature. Confined in our reasoning to the present state, deprived of a revelation, and without a moral system distinct from the operations of nature, it is impossible to meet the evident demands of justice.
And again, when the requirements of a moral and natural law come in conflict, as they often do in the present mixed state of good and evil, preference is uniformly given to the former. And very often are men false to their own theories to be true to this fact. Though they deny the distinctions, they act in conformity to the propositions herein set forth. In the case of the burning of a house whose inmates are in danger of perishing, moral law requires that we rescue them from impending destruction, even though we suffer much pain because of our effort; but natural law calls us to pursue that course of action which would preserve ourselves from the burning and the suffering. To obey the calls of natural law, and let others perish without the effort and consequent suffering necessary to their rescue, would be condemned by all as selfishness. Whatever may be their theories, men uniformly make the distinction here claimed, and elevate moral duties above conformity to merely natural law. J. H. W.