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«V1» 1^

SAINT PAUL'S DOCTRINE

THE ATONEMENT:

BEING THE

Fourth Annual- Lecture before the Theological Union op
Mount Allison Wesley an College.

HOWARD SPRAGUE, D. D.

Delivered June, 1882.

' SAINT JOHN, N. B.
J. & A. McMillan, 98 Peince William Street.

1883.

tj--.i!;i

'1 -if

^
m

Saint Pauls Doctrine

THE ATONEMENT:

BEING THE

Fourth Annual Lecture before the Theological Union of
Mount Allison Wesleyan College.

HOWARD SPRAGUE, D. D.

Delivered June, 1882.

SAINT JOHN, N. B.
J. & A. McMillan, 98 Prince William Strxjjet.

1883.

)

j!f

^ '

■|

LECTURE.

SAINT PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.

1I7HETHER it he wise or not to sj)eciilate upon a theme so
'* mysterious as tlie rationale of Rc(lemj)tion, the human
mind, oheying a native impulse, lias speculated, with abundant
and varied, if not with satisfactory results. Numerous theories
of Atonement, sanctioned by illustrious names and supported by
ingenious reasoning, are offered to inquiring Christians. It is
impossible to be indifferent spectators of the many-sided con-
troversy, in which the disputants deal with the fundamental facts
of the Christian religion, and in which they freely charge each
other with mistaking the central truths of Revelation, and even
with misrepresenting and traducing the character of God. But
what hope is there that we shall be able to decide which of these
theories is true, or whether any is ? Is it worth the effort to do
so? Or may we more wisely decline the tedious task, and repose
upon the simple facts which they profess to explaiii ?

There is a disposition to put the facts and the doctrines of
Christianity in contrast, the one as the objects of faith and the
basis of hope, the other as a field of curious and useless specula-
tion, and to arrange the Gospels and Epistles in this order of
relative importance. But the facts of Redemption can be nothing
to us until we have some view of their nature and relations ; and
our view of their nature and relations is our doctrine of the
Atonement. It may be meagre, and it may be false; but if
Christ is our Saviour, and we are Christians, we hold some view
of what He has done for us.

DeQuincey, in old age, reports himself as having been always
unable to resolve this theme, and as having obtained no assist-
ance either from the philosophizings of Coleridge or the simpler

(3)

Saint Paui/h Dcktrine of tiik Atonement.

explanations of Ills (;lcar-hoa(lo(l and tlionj^htt'ul niotlier. "Tiicre
are," ho says, "countless (lincrcnt schoniCH to expound this do<^-
trinc of trust and ai)propriation ; hut they ronund me of the
ancilia at Home, the eleven eopies of the saered shield, or Palla-
dium : to i)revent the true one heint? stolen, the eleven were made
exaetlv like it. So with the true doctrine v'»f the Atonement: it
is lurking among the others that look like it; but who is to say
which of them all it is?"*

So long as speculation busies itself with the construction of
theories, for which it afterwards seeks sup|K)rt in the Scriptures,
there will be the variety and confusion of o[)inion which per-
plexed even the acute and brilliant essayist. The Atonement is
a matter of revelation : the Scriptures alone can tell us what it is.
After wo have found it there, we may seek confirmatory evidence
in the speculations of the philosopher, and illustrations in history
and the relations of social life. J^ut what we find, or fail to find,
in these fields of inquiry, can neither affect its character as the
Bible reveals it, nor disturb the foundations of its truth.

To thi' inquiry into tlie testimony of Revelation, I propose
to direct your attention ; and, as it would be impossible to sur-
vey the whole field of the teaching even of the New Testament,
1 select that of a single writer, and ask : " What was St. Paul's
doctrine of the Atonement ?"

The question is not intended to suggest that Paul may have
had a peculiar view, differing in important, or even in subordi-
nate details, from that of other Apostles ; but simply that we
may hope to find in his writings a view definite and (complete.
There are, however, in his case, some special reasons for separat-
ing his doctrine from that of the others, for the purpose of
distinct consideration. One reason is the fact that he reached it
independently of them. He tells us that for three years after
his conversion he did not visit Jerusalem, and did not see an
Apostle; that for fourteen years longer he pursued an independ-
ent course ; that then he ^Msited the Capital to declare and defend
the Gospel he preached among the Gentiles, and to assert the

* Page's "Life of DeQuincey," Am. ed., Vol. I., p. 393.

* I*

Saint Paul's DocnuNE of tiik Atonement.

«i«

!"•

.•^«

rifjjlits of the Gentile elinrehes ; and tliat the pillars of the mother
eluireh — Peter, James, ami John — could add nothinfjj to his
knowledge of the truth, hut, giving to him the right hand of fel-
lowshij), recognized at once the fulness of his Gospel and the
frnitfidness of his work.* By his own knowledge of the ancient
Seri|)tures; by his reading, in the light of then>, the crucifixion
and resurrection of the Lord ;t above all, by "the revelation of
the Son of God in him,"| he had gained his doctrine independ-
ently of human aid. It was emphatically his. His own thought,
his own spiritual ex|)erience. Lis own communings with the divine
Saviour, had led him into the atoning mystery of Messiah's death.
The doctrine of others may confirm his: he did not need the
confirmation. He stood on independent and solid ground.

Another reason for the separate consideration of St. Paul's
doctrine is the transcendent infiuence it has had on the religious
thinkings of the world. A few great minds, appearing, for the
most part, singly and in widely separate epochs, have determined
the course and the character of theologic thought ; and, among
the few, the chief is Paul. He was ignorant of the Christian
faith until near the middle of his life. After he embraced it, he
had no leisure for study and system-building, except the three
years in Arabia and the time he spent in Tarsus and its neigh-
borhood before coming to Antioch. From Antioch onward he
was on long journeys and in busy evangelism ; passed through
repeated and severe suffering; through much of the time earned
his daily bread by manual toil, and through most of it carried
the burden of broken health. Yet his octcasional letters to the
churches reveal an intense activity of thought, contain the sub-
stance of Christian doctrine, and have controlled the thinkings
of the great Christians of ancient and modern times. No influ-
ence is so plainly impressed on the great theologians and sysiems
of the church, — Augustine, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, Arminius,
Edwards, — so that it has become the fashion with rationalistic
students of the beginnings of Christianity to speak of St. Paul
as the founder of the Christian church and faith.

*Gal. i. 17— ii. 9. fActs xiii. 27-37. Gal. i. 12.

Satnt I*Ari,'.s Doctimm: nr tiik Atonkmknt.

T<» avoid any apiM.'araiicc of Ix'^'^in;;; the <|ii('sti()n in the very
titl(! of this discourse, it may he well to explain tiic sense in wliieli
I use the word ** Atonement." It (K*enrs lait once in tiie author-
ized version of tlie New Testament,* and disa|>pears I'ntm the
r(!vised, tlie substituted word heiu}:; " reeoiM'iliafion." This is
the etymolo<rieal meaning of the term, — the at-one-ment, — and
was a common us(; of it wiien the authorized version was made.
Frecpient use of it, in tliis sense, is found in Sliakespeare :

" He (Ic'siroH to iiiiikc alniifincnt
Betwixt the Duke of (rloucester and your l>r<itlu'rs."t

" I would do niiicli
To atone tliom, for the hne I l)i'ar to Ciissio ;":{:

and so in many other places.

Tiiis word, like many others, has now transferred its meanint^
backward from the ett'ect to the cause; and in the hin»:;uji>j;e of
theology designates, not the residt of the work of Clirist, hut
that work itself, or rather, so much of it as produced this i)ar-
ticular residt. It is perfectly fair to (piestion the wisdom and
convenience of this change ; but it is useless to insist U])on the
ancient meaning in the theological discussions of the ])reseut day ;
and it is frivolous to produce that meaning as an argument against
the realitv of the thine; which the word now denotes. Christ
reconciletl (iod and man : the iiarmony tljus secured could for-
merly be called Atonement. How did He do so? The answer
to this question gives what is meant by Atonement now. The
word belongs to no particular theory, but to any theory which
professes to answer the question. Did St. Paul give an answer?
When we have found it, we have found his doctrine of the
Atonement.

There are two accounts of his teacrhing, — the fragmentary
reports of his preaching in the Acts of the Apostles, and the
record of his doctrine in his own Kpistles. It is not now j)ossible
to discuss the authenticity of the reports and the genuineness of
the letters. And it is not necessary. A successful defence has
been made by comj)etent scholars against the assaults of Baur and

*Roui. V. 11. fRi^liard the Third, I. iii. 3t). tOtheUo IV. i. 244.

• 4

• J

Saint PAur/s Dot tiiixk of tiik Atoxkmilvt. 7

Zcller upon tlio crodibility of tlic Acts. The Paulino EpistlcH
aro tlio part of Scriptiin; whicli has ^ivcii tlio <ifr(>atuHt trouhlo t«)
the (loHtriK'tivc critics. Those of them which arc the most im-
portant for the present piirpo-^e are, on all hands, confessed to he
genuine, and have never \m>i\ the subjects of serious doubt.
Even so free a critic as Uenan, dividinjjc them into five classes, —
the unquestioned, the certain, the probable, the doubtful, and the
false, — puts but three fipistles in the fifth class, and one in the
fourth, viz., those to Timothy, to Titus, and to the K|)he8ians.* So
far as I am capable of jndjjjinj!:, the arji;uments against the genuine-
ness of these letters are more than answered bv the internal evi-
deuce and the belief of the ancrient church. St. l^aul's doctrine of
the Atonement would, however, be comj)letc without them ; and
almost every passage of them to which I shall have occasion to
refer, has its meaning expressed in parallel passages of the
other letters.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is held by some critics of all
schools to be the work of another writer ; but some of those who
hold this view maintain that it furnishes abundant evidence that
its author was familiar with St. Paul's teaching, and probably
wrote it under his inspiratio-> or supervision. It is sublime in
its Christology, and rich in its treatment of the doctrines of the
Cross ; and these doctrines are the doctrines of St. Paul. But
we are not at liberty to use it in the present inquiry. With this
exception, however, all the letters which bear the Apostle's name
may be appealed to in illustration of his doctrine.

It would not be necessary to say that our investigation is
purely inductive, and aims at discovering the truth by finding
and comparing the facts, were it not that convenience and brev-
ity of discussion compel a classification of texts from the begin-
ning, and that it may be supposed the texts have been selected
and arranged to meet the demands of a foregone conclusion.
On the contrary, everything that has come down to us from the
lips and pen of the Apostle has been carefully examined ; every
passage bearing upon the subject, unless the bearing is very

* Kenan: Saint Paul, Am. Trans, p. 10.

Saint Pattj.'s Doctrink of thk AT()M-:Mi:xT.

r I

indirect, has been jiotod ; and the ciassification to ho given is tlie
result. The necessit}'' for some ehissilication arises out of the
cliaracter of the Ejv'stles, of which nearly all are not formally
doctrinal. They were written, save in two instances, to churches
or persons whom Paul had directly instructed, and who must
have been familiar with his doctrine in a matter so fundaniental
as the redeeming work of the Lord. His references to this sub-
ject are therefore incidental in the majority of his letters, and,
on this very account, have an im[)ortance which docs not belong
to formal reasoning; for they imply a general accej)tance of the
doctrine by the churches and persons addressed, that it was of
the verv substance of tiie Christian faith as universalis held in
the churches planted by St. Paul.

• 1 ♦

* 1 '

I. One characteristic of St. Paul's treatment of the work of
Redemption is conspicuous and constant throughout the letters :
it is that his notice of the earthly life of the Redeemer, as related
to it, begins at the end. He does not detail the facts of the
Saviour's history, — only two or tliree times does he refer to
any, — until he comes to the close ; and then he fixes upon the
Cross a fascinated eye. The death and the resurrection of Jesus,
these are for Paul the two momentous facts : and his whoie treat-
ment of them implies that in these, but especially in the former,
the Cross, the Blood, the Death of Christ, he regards the Lord
as sustaining a unique relation to the world.

This is characteristic both of the general preaching and of
the letters of the Apostle. It is not very conspicuous in the
discourses reported in the Acts; but this is accounted for by
their evidently exceptional character, intended, as the selection
of them is, to illustrate the bearing of the Apostle .n the great
crises of his life. There are but six in all ; omitting those spoken
in self defence, there are but three ; one, suggested by the idola-
try of Athens, on the spirituality and unity of God ;* one, to a
congregation of Jews, in which he attempts to convince them of
the Messinhship of Jesus by a comparison of Messianic prophe-

*Actsxvii. 22-31.

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Saint Paul's Doctrinp: of the Atonement.

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cies .v'itli the circumstances of His deatli and resurrection, and in
wliich lie declares the forgiveness of sins to be dependent on the
work of Christ;* and one to the Elders at Miletus, — an exhor-
tation to pastoral fidelity, patterned after the example he had
given them, and sustained by the solemn consideration tliat the
church of which they were overseers the Lord had "purchased
with his own blood." f And, fu»'ther, all these addresses, except
that to the Ephesian Elders, were spoken to hearers who were
not Christians. It is evident, then, that these discourses afford
no indication of the general character of the Apostle's ministrv,
of his way of dealing with the penitent and inquiring, or of his
education of the newly-formed churches in the truths of the
Christitin religion. For information on these points we must
turn to his letters. There we find, not only the advanced teach-
ing which he gave to Christians of mature experience, but de-
scri})tions of his way of winning souls and of feeding the infancv
of faith.

In reviewing his ministry at Corinth, he says he had been
sent " to preach the Gospel : not with wisdom of v.ords, lest the
cross of Chr.^i should be made of none effect. * * * J^nt we
preach Christ crucified. * * * For I determined not to know
aiiything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." I
He gives in brief the same account of his preaching to the
Galatians, before whose eyes he had set forth Jesus Christ, as
if visibly crucified before them. || There is no room for doubt
that this was his theme wherever he preached the Gospel, in
the synagogues, the market-places, the houses of friends, from
Damascus to Rome. He further tells us wiiat feelings were
aroused in his hearers by this preaching of the Cross, by the
emphasis which iie laid not only on the fact, but on the manner,
the infamous and degrading manner, of Jesus' death : for we may
assume Corinth to be no excicption in this particular. " The
preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness * * *
to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness." §

*Actr, xiii. 16-41.
fActs XX. 17-35.

XI Cor. i. 17-23 — ii. 2.
IIGal. iii. 1.

^ 1 Cor. i. 18-23.

Saint Paul's Doctrine op the Atonement.

The unKpeakable shame of the Cross may account for the
feeling of the Jew, if Paul identified Jesus with Messiah, but it
does not explain tlie derision of the (lentile. As a good man's
proof of his sincerity and goodness, it could have offended none.
As a wrong inflicted on the innocent by the hands of malice, it
(!0uld only have aroused indignation against Jewish injustice and
cruelty, and pity for a good man's fate. As a martyr's final
testimony to his high and heroic faith, to the sincerity of his
motives, to the importance of his message, it could only have
excited admiration of a self-denial and fortitude, at that time rare
in the Greco-Roman world. It could not, then, have been these
aspects of the Cross that appeared prominently in the preaching
of Paul. It was, it must have been, the explanation which he
put upon the Cross, the relation in which he made it stand to his
hearers and to the world, that provoked the scorn of Grecian
culture, and the hatred of Pharisees and priests.

And why, we may ask, finding such feelings aroused by his
manner of presenting the Gospel, did he persist in his course ?
Why, after his reasonings with the wise men of Athens, meeting
them upon their own ground, and laying a basis in philosophy
for his Christian conception of the Godhead, and the unsatisfac-
tory result, did he go on to Corinth with the firm resolve to have
no theme but "Christ and Him crucified," and never afterward
alter that resolve? To win men to Christ was the supreme pur-
pose of his life : he gave up all for it; he bore all things for it;
he " took pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in
persecutions, in di.stresses, for Christ's sake." * Yet his message
wins ten, but alienates a hun<lred. He was not needlesslv severe
or offensive in his speecli. He was not a narrow-minded bigot,
standing upon trifles antl contending for things non-essential to
the Christir.n faitii. He was (ourteous in his treatment of all
men and ; kilful in conciliating opponents. He was ready to
make concessions to the prejudices of others when no principle
was compromised, even at the risk of his own reputation for con-
sistency. He would have made any personal sacrifice that "the

*2Cor. xii. 10.

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Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

<•

offence of the Cross might cease." But the Cross continues to be
so peculiarly prominent in his preaching that everything in Chris-
tianity that is beautiful and attractive to the natural mind — and
surely there is much — is forgotten in the scorn and hatred aroused
by the doctrines of the Cross. " Nothing," says Dean Stanley,
"shows the confidence of the Apostle more strongly than the
prominence which he gives to an aspect of his teaching so un-
popular." * This may be true ; but it is more evidently true that
nothing shows more strongly that St. Paul believed the Cross to
be the most important fact in the Gospel, and that Christ upon
the Cross held a unique relation to the world, and one of supreme
importance.

But, it is said, "while the Apostle lays great stress upon the
death of Christ, * * * he lays tenfold more emphasis on the
resurrection :"t "This, and not the cross with its supposed effects,
is the grand object to which they (the Apostles) call the attention
and the faith of their hearers." | It is of course true that, like
Peter in Jerusalem after Pentecost, Paul in Antioch and Athens
and Corinth, preached unto the people " Jesus and the Resurrec-
tion." And why not ? The resurrection is a glorious fact, and
on any theory of the death of Christ, it is the one transcendent
miracle on which, as on a sure foundation, the whole Christian
fabric rests. The Jews knew that Jesus had died upon the Cross,
and there was no difficulty in securing the belief of it among the
Gentiles. The resurrection was the remarkable, the wonderful,
the incredible fact. That Jesus had died, died by public execu-
tion, died upon the cross, by itself proved nothing in his favour,
but was, prima facie, evidence against his claims. But the resur-
rection " proved him to be the Son of God with power," § and
was necessarily dwelt upon by the personal witnesses, as the
unanswerable evidence for Christ. Beside this, the resurrection
of Jesus -^brought life and immortality to light," and in addition
to being an argument for Christianity, is one of the media of its

* St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians : A. P. Stanley : 4th edition, p. 46.

t Livermore : Commentary on Romans, p. 65.

X Martineau : Studies of Christianity, p. 105. § Romans i. 4.

•i

]

Saint Paul's Doctrine op^ the Atonement.

revelations; and he wliu counted it liis duty to declare the whole
counsel of God could not ignore the great truths iuiniediately
connected with the resurrection of the Lord. There is another
reason why he must have dwelt upon it, viz., that he had a special
theory of the relation of the death of Jesus to the world. It
would have been impossible for him to obtain belief in his
doctrine of the death, if he had not been able to assert the resur-
rection of Jesus ; it was almost impossible to gainsay his doctrine,
if the resurrection were proved to be a fact.

No, it may be said, there is another reason, and it is incon-
sistent with those you have been giving: the resurrection, and not
the death of Christ, is the ground of justification ; and it is on
that account the Apostle so often refers to it, and that when " his
general description (of faith in Christ) is replaced by a more
s{)ecific account of this justifying state of mind, it is faith in the
Resurrection on which the attention is fastened. * * * He was
* delivered for our offences and raised again for our justifica-
tion.' " * The English translation of the passage thus quoted by
the objector may seem to serve his purpose : the Greek original
contradicts his theory. As in the translation, so in the original,
the same preposition [did] is used twice; and this preposition, in
this construction, has the signification given to it in the first part
of the English sentence. The same meaning must be preserved
in the second part : " Who was delivered on account of our
offences and was raised on account of our justification ;" that is,
our justification was, not the end, but the cause of His resurrec-
tion. Because the atonement of His death was sufficient and
accepted of God, God raised Him from the dead. Our sins
crucified Him; our accomplished justification raised Him again. f

But if this exposition were doubtful, the commonly accepted
reading is not more favourable to the objector's cause, if we read
the passage in the light of other Scriptures. If Paul says "He
was raised for our justification," he also says, " We are now jus-
tified by His blood."! We cannot be, in the same sense, justified

*Martineau : Studies of Christianity, p. 106.
t Godet : Commentary on Romans, IV., 25.

X Romans v. 9.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement. 13

by His blood and justif.ed by His resurrection ; and the harmony
of the two assertions is found in a third stateinen of St. Paul,
that the resurrection proved Him to be the Son of God, and, by
implication, proved the sufficiency of His death as the ground of
justification. In other words, justification is obtained for us by
the death of Christ—" We are justified by His blood;" justifi-
cation is realized by us through faith, which has the resurrecti')n
for its warrant, but the atoning death for its object — " He wus
raised for our justification."

There is, then, no fair ground for the assertion that St. Paul
lays "tenfold more emphasis on the resurrection" than on the
death of Christ. We have had his own declaration that he
preached the Cross of Christ; we shall find confirmatory
evidence at every step as we go on ; and the general tenor and
frequency and emphasis of his teaching respecting the death of
Christ, must be left to show that, however much he had to say
of the resurrection, the Cross was his central theme. A single
illustration may conclude this point, and establish our proposi-
tion, that the Apostle regarded the Lord as sustaining in His
death a unique relation to the world. Wherever the Apostle
founded a church he established "the Lord's Supper." The first
record of its institution that we possess was made by him.* He
did not regard it as a simple symbol of brotherly love, but "as
often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup," he says, " ye do
shew the Lord's death till He come." f

II. This relation of Christ to the world is more particularly
defined by St. Paul to be a relation to the sins of the world. " I
delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." |
"Our Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins."§
" Jesus our Lord * * who was delivered for our oifences." ||
"Delivered" (parndidomi) is a common expression with St.
Paul to describe both the Divine appoiatment and the self-

* 1 Corinthians xi. 23.
tVerse 26.

X 1 Cor. XV. 3.
§Gal. i. 3,4.

Rom. iv. 24, 25.

Saint Paul's Dcxtrine of the Atonement.

surronder of Christ to death,* suggested to him perliaps by
Isaiuli's description of the Servant of Jehovah, whose "soul
was delivered to death." f

1. "He was delivered for our offences." "We have iiere
^dia' witli tlie accusative, which in sacred and profane authors in
the Greek language, is the most common mark of the impulsive
cause." I In some sense, therefore, which it must be left to sub-
sequent expositions to explain, our sins were the cause of the
death of Christ.

2. His relation in death to the sins of the world is described
under two further particulars. He bears the sins of men. This
])articular expression belongs to Peter rather than to Paul ; but in
language of great intensity and emphasis Paul asserts tlie fact —
" God hath made Him to be sin for us ;"§ " He was " made a
curse for us."i!

In the former of these passages, the contrast between the
sinlessness of Christ and that which God made Him to become,
and the antithesis between our righteousness and His sin, require
us to regard "sin" as equivalent to "sinful," and exclude the
frequent explanation of it as "sin-offering." He was sinless;
God made Him sinful: w'e become righteous before God, because
He became sinful for us. The abstract is used for the concrete
for the sake of vividness and force. Yet it is not necessarv that
we regard the Apostle as saying that Christ was actually made
sinful, and was punished as a sinner : it is sufficient if we
understand that He endured the suffering which sin caused;
which sin deserved ; which He bore for the sake of the sinful,
and which, endured by Him, God accepted as if the sinner had
borne it, and as equivalent, for tlie ends for w hich it was borne,
to the punishment of the sinner himself.

Perhaps the true meaning of this important passage cannot
be brought out better than in the words of Grotius : "As the

« •»

* Kom. viii. 32. Gal. ii. 20. Eph. v. 2, 25. f Isaiah liii. 12.
X Grotius : Defence of the Catliolic Faith, translated in the Biblio. Sacra,
Vol. 36, page 107.
r^Cor. V. 21. II Gal. iii. 13.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

« ••

Hebrews employ sin for punishment, so they also call Him who
suif'ered the punishment, sin. * * * Therefore, following this
form of speech, Isaiah said of Christ: * He made His soul sin,'
/. e., He exposed His soul to the punishment of sin. In the
same way, Paul said, * He hath made him to be sin for us.' * *
Socinus, to escape the authority of the Pauline passage, sup[)oses
that by the word sin should be understood a man regarded by
men as a sinner, but without warrant ; for, first, there is no ex-
ample of such a use of either the Greek or the Hebrew word ;
again, Paul attributes to God the act of making Christ sin ; and,
again, this interpretation cannot be adapted to the words of Isaiah
which contain a similar phrase. For what Paul says God did,
Isaiah ascribes to Christ, that doubtless He made His soul sin,
or He made Himself sin. Besides, Paul contrasts sin and righ-
teousness : * We have been made the righteousness of God,' i. e.,
we have been justified, or liberated from divine punishment.
But that this might be done, Christ was made sin, i. e., suffered
the divine punishment. * * * Can it be anything else than that
Gotl has inflicted punishment upon the undeserving ?" * It is
necessary to say that throughout his treatise, Grotius does not use
"punishment" in a strict sense, for he did not hold to the penal
suffering of Christ, but to the sufferings of Christ substituted for
the penalty of sin.

The other passage, " being made a curse for us," is virtually
equivalent to the last. The form differs; the matter is the same.
This is a more direct assertion of what the former intends, that
Christ bore the consequences of sin, the curse, that which, when
inflicted on the sinner, is the expression of tlie wrath of God ;
and that He did so upon the cross. We must not explain away
these solemn words, but take them in their obvious meaning.
There is no figure in this passage. It is a real deliverance that
is effected by the real bearing of a real curse. Nor need we
shrink from this representation of the work of Christ, if only
we are careful not to import into the Apostle's language ideas
which he does not express. He does not say or imply that Christ

Grotius : Defence of the Catholic Faitli : Bib. Sac, Vol. 36, p. 121.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

was the object of tlic anger of God when He l)ore tlie f^in.s of men :
on tlie otlier hand, Ije .says tluit in tliat awful liour of Atonement,
when He fully eanie under the weight of that curse which He
had assumed, and wlien He cried, "My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken me?" even then he was a "sweet smelling; otter-
ing and sacrifice to God."* The* oft-quoted words of Luther, in
his connnent on this verse, in which he speaks of Christ as a
sinner in every kind and to every degree, and therefore as hearing
the wrath of God, are shocking indeed. But there is reason to
think he did not speak literally, but only carried out in multi-
plied exj)ressions the Apostle's form of speech : " He made Hiju
to be sin," "He became a curse." For Luther says: "Those
sentences may, indeed, be well expounded after this manner:
Christ is made a curse, that is to say, a sacrifice for the curse ;
and sin, that is, a sacrifice for sin : yet in my judgment it is bet-
ter to keep the proper signification of the words, because there is
a greater force and vehemency therein. For when a sinner cometh
to the knowledge of himself indeed, he feeleth not only that he
is miserable, but misery itself; not only that he is a sinner, and
is accursed, but even sin and malediction itself. For it is a ter-
rible thing to bear sin, the wrath of God, malediction and death.
Wherefore, that, nrin which hath a true feeling of these things,
(as Christ did truly and effectually feel them for all mankind,)
is made even sin, death and a curse." f

3. A third particular in St. Paul's conception of the relation
of Christ, in his death, to the sins of the world, is that He delivers
men from sin, from the guilt of sin, and from God's wrath and
penalties.

Sometimes both the humiliation of Christ and the advantage
arising from it to men are presented in a very general way, as
when he says: "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor, that
ye through his poverty might be rich."| But usually he par-
ticularizes the blessings, and connects them immediately with the

*Eph. V. 2. f Luther: Commentary on Galatians iii. 13.

12 Cor. viii.: 9.

t k

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement. 17

• m

death of Christ : " He gave himself for our sins, that he migiit
deliver us from this present evil world."* He "gave himself for
us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity." f This is salva-
tion in the present time. On the other hand, he saves us from
the future penalty of sin. He "delivered us from the wrath to
come."| He " hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, l)eing
made — because he was made — a curse for us."§ "Being now
justified by His blood we shall be saved from wrath through
Him." II And, not to multiply quotations, we "obtain salvation
by our Lord Jesus Christ, who di'^d for us, that, whether we
wake or sleep, we should live together with Him." 1 The Greek,
in this last passage, expresses more directly than the translation,
the connection between His dying for us and our obtaining salva-
tion. For the participial phrase, {tou apothanmtoa huperhemdn,)
as Crawford remarks, "has the force of the well known Latin
phrase, 'quippe qui,' "** and may l)e translated "in as much as,"
i. e., " became he died for us." These passages make it plain
that Paul connects the forgiveness of sins and eternal life with
the death of Christ as their ground and cause.

4. In describing His relation to the world and its sins, Paul
further speaks of the Lord as a substitute^ taking the place of
sinners, suff^jring and dying in their stead.

The Greek prepositions used by the Apostle are worthy of
consideration ; for, if no confident argument can be based on
them alone, the context often invests them with important
meaning. The three prepositions occurring in this connection
{peri, huper, anti), and all translated "for," have diiferent mean-
ings and denote different relations. "Anti" means " instead of,"
and must be so understood. It is used by the Lord when he
says of himself that He came " to give His life a ransom for
many ;" ft where both the preposition and the figure involve the
idea of substitution. It is also used by St. Paul when he says

*Gal. i.4. fTitusii. 14. Jl Thes. i. 10.

§ Gal. iii. 13. || Rom. v. 9. "jy 1 Thes. v. 9, 10.

** Crawford: Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement, third ed., p. 55.
tt Matt. XX. 28.

Saint Patji/h Doctrine of the Atonement.

the Lord " jj^tive Ilimrtelf a ransom for all;"* wliore the noun
and preposition are used as a compound word [anti-lutron), and
" the idea of an exchange, which lies in the substantive itself,
gains special force from the preposition." f

Of the other two prejMwitions one, {jjcri), means "concern-
ing," ** on account of," " in behalf of," but never " instead of."
It is used by Paul when he sjxjaks of Christ's relation to sin,
where the idea of substitution would be inadmissible; but never
when he speaks of His relation to sinners, where the idea would
be proper. Here he invariably uses ^^ Impci'" which nieaus both
" in beiialf of" and " instead of." That Paul is aware of this
second sense, and sometimes intends it, is clear from his statement
to Philemon : " I would have retained Onesimus with me, that
in thy stead {huper sou) he might have ministeretl unto me."|
But in every instance the nature of the case or tlie context must
determine the sense of the preposition. When Paul says " We
are ambassadors for Christ" — " We pray you in Christ's stead,
{hupet^ Christou),'^ § the nature of the case settles the meaning : it
must be " in the place of." So in the passage, " Scarcely for a
righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man,
some would even dare to die," || the nature of the case requires
us to understand " in the place of." For, a man does not die for
another as a gratuitous manifestation of his love, but in his
place, to save him from death or some calamity terrible as death.
And when Paul goes on to say, "God commendeth His love
toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,"
he instances a parallel case, which must be a case of substitution.
In other instances the context settles the meaning. When
Paul says " one died for all," ^ some uncertainty may attach to
the clause taken alone ; but when he adds the inference, " then
all died," he fixes upon the preposition the sense of substitution.
And this account of his meaning is borne out by the fact that
this word is found in the New Testament, upon the lips of
speakers of every station and character, in connection with the

*lTiiii. ii. 6.
§2Cor. V. 20.

t Lange's Commentary, in Loco.
II Rom. V. 7.

X Philemon, 13.
ir2Cor. V. 14.

!
4t

t <

Saint Paul's Docthine of the Atonement. 10

pubstitution of life for life. When the Lord says, "Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for {huper)
his friends,"* there can be no doubt of his meaning: He extols,
as the noblest act of self-sacrificing love, the giving of one's life
to save the life of one's friend. When Peter, in the ardour of
his devotion says, " I will lay down my life for thee {huper
80u)"f he certainly means that he is ready to die in his Master's
stead. When Caiaphas declaras " It is exjKidient that one man
should die for the people,";); we could have no doubt of his
meaning even if it were not added, " that the whole nation perish
not." And when John affirms that the High Priest spoke by an
inspiration himself did not recognize, he both explains the mean-
ing of the priest's prophetic words, and i-ecords his own doctrine
of the vicariousness of Jesus' death : " He prophesied that Jesus
should die for that nation and not for that nation only."§ Thus
we see that this preposition, while not necessarily involving the
idea of suKstitution, yet, from the nature of the subject and in
the connections in which it stands, expresses it with sufficient
precision.

But it is not necessary to rest the weight of the argument for
substitution upon the meaning of a preposition. Apart altogether
from its significance, it is impossible to give any other meaning
to many of the passages in which it is found. This has been
made plain in the foregoing, and it is not worth while to repeat
at length. When St. Paul illustrates the greatness of God's love
by comparing His sending of His Son to death for sinners, to the
devotion of the man who sacrifices his life to avert a good man's
death, substitution is the unavoidable inference : it is life in the
place of life, in the one case as in the other. Had Paul said no
more than that Christ was made a curse for us, we could have
inferred no more than that he suffered in our interest; but when
he also says that we were under a curse, and have been saved
from it by Christ's being made a curse, it is not an inference, but
a paraphrase, to say that He stood in our place and suffered and
died in our stead. And so, also, when Paul says that Christ was

* John XV. 13. fJohn xiii. 37. JJohnxi. 50. § John xi. 51-52.

Saint Paul'h Doctuink of the Atonkmknt.

" madi? HJn for iih," — sin, in the s^nse alrwly explaiiie'l ; for he
l)utH tlu! Lord ill vicarious relation to uh, by adding that by His
endurance of what 8in brought upon Hini, we are made the
righteousnewH of (iod, are justified, are saved from the |)enalty of
sin. He who by suffering saves another from the suffering other-
wise inevitable, must suffer in that other's place.

6. At the same time, St. Paul represents the Lord as coming
into this relation to man and his sin through the prompting of
His own love, and as bearing in His humiliation. His sorrows,
His death, a really voluntarif part. \Vii.hout necessity and with-
out constraint, "He gave Himself for our sins."* It was a
manifestation of His own grace that "though He .* 's rich, yet
for your sakes He Ixjcame iKX>r." f " The Son of Go * loved me,
and gave Himself for meJ'X "Christ hath loved us, and hath
given Himself for us."§ He "loved the church, and gave
Himself for it." ||

Such is Paul's account of the relation of Christ to the world,
in His sufferings and death.

III. On the other hand, he represents Him as sustaining, in
the Atonement of His death, a relation to God.

Three particulars may be named :

1. He dies by God's appointment. "It is appointed unto
men once to die ;" but in the view of St. Paul, everything con-
nected with the death of Christ, — the end, the time, the means,
the circumstances, — Is by divine decree. He "gave Himself for
our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world,
according to the will of God and our Father." ^ " God hath
appointed" the end, "to obtain salvation," and the means, "by
our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us." ** God made Him the
sinner's substitute, and laid upon Him the burden of sin and its
atoning woe: for "He hath made Him to be sin for us."tt God
appointed the whole course and character of the Redeeming
history : for " when the fulness of the time was come, God sent

» 4

*Gal. i. 4. 1 2 Cor. viii. 9, J Gal. ii. 20.

II Eph. V. 25. if Gal. i. 4. ** 1 Thess. v. 9, 10.

§ Eph. V. 2.
tt 2 Cor. V. 21.

■)

* «

» 4

Saint Paul's Doctrine op thk Atonemrnt. 21

forth His Son, nmdeof a woman, made under the law, to redeem
them that wore under the law."*

2. He dies as the renutt and expreftmon of the love of God to
man. **(Uk\ commendeth His love toward us in that while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for U8."t

3. He dies to illustrate and honour thej^istice of God, and so to
make possible the exercise of meroy coward sinful men : " 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 at this time
his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him
which believeth in Jesus." | The full consideration of this great
passage is deferred to a subsequent stage of the discussion.

Meanwhile, the foregoing may, I think, be called a complete
summing and an accurate classification of the Pauline passages
relating to the Atonement. It is, perhaps, liable to the charge
of being commonplace, and of being based on old and familiar
interpretations of the Sacred Text. It may, on that account, be
more confidently claimeci for it that it represents the mind of
the Apostle, than if it rested on novelties of exegesis. Recent
attempts in our own language, elaborate and ingenious as some
of them have been, to put new meanings into the Apostle's words,
in the interest of modern theories of the Atonement, confirm a
remark of that great philologist and exegete, Heinrich Meyer,
with reference to the theological literature of Germany : " Long
experience and observation in this field of scientific inquiry have
taught me that — after there have been expended upon the New
Testament, the labours of the learning, the acuteness, the mastery
of Scripture, and the pious insight of eighteen centuries — new
interpretations, undiscerned hitherto by the minds most convers-
ant with such studies, are destined, as a rule, speedily to perish
and be deservedly forgotten. I am distrustful of such exegetical
discoveries, and those of the present day are not of a kind to
lessen my distrust." §

*Gal.iv.4,5. fRora.v. 8. See also Titus ii. 11-14 ; iii. 4-7.

X Romans iii. 25, 26.

§ Meyer : Com. on Corinthians, Clark's Trans., vol. 1, p. ix. note.

Ji2

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

IV. In passages included in the foregoing summary. St.
Paul dchoribes the atoning work of Christ by several general
terms; each of which gathers up some of the particulars already
specified, while giving prominence perhaps to one; and all of
which taken together present a very full view of his doctrine
of the Atonement.

]. One of these general terms is Sacrifice, the comparison
being at one time with sacrifice as appointed by the Mosaic
ritual, and, at another, wkh sacrifice as a religious institution of
the world.

We have the former when, having exhorted the church at
Corinth to jturify herself by casting out the old leaven, he adds:
" For our Passover also hath been sacrificed, even Cb.rist."* This
is a proof of the propriety of the exhortation, and a motive for
obeying it. It is not an accidental comparison suggested by the
figure of leaven already used, but one founded in a real and
divinely intended similitude: it is type and anti-type. Paul says,
there is a ^rue analogy between your position and duty, and those
of the Hebrew family celebrating the Passover and putting away
all leaven from the dwelling ; for theie is not only a general like-
ness, but in one particular, and that the chief, your position is
the same : " Our passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ."
This is not only an illustrative reference, comparing things that
differ: it is a descriptive illustration, presenting the feature in
which two things are alike. This view of the Apostle's words
is justified by other passages of the New Testament; by the
coincidence of the Lord's passion with the time of the Paschal
celebration ; f by His own substitution of the memorial of His
death and the great deliverance it wrought, for the annual com-
memoration of the first Passover and the ancient redemption;!
by St. John's assertion that the Scriptures which described the
offering of the Paschal Lamb were fulfilled in the circumstances
of the death of Christ. §

* ^

» t

••

*1 (^)r. V. 7. Revised version.
JLukexxii. 15-20.

fMatt. xxvi. 17.
§ John xix. 36

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

( *

•t

What, then, is that feature in which the Paschal Lamb and
our liord are alii<e? One word of the text states it: both were
offered in sacrifice. This verb (thio) may be used in the sense
of "to kill" without reference to the purpose, and is so used
in the New Testament:* its proper meaning is "to kill in
sacrifice ; " in classic Greek it is a word of the altar only ;
and it is used in this sense, in the only place beside this, where
Paul employs it,t and in that part of the narrative of St.
Luke which relates to St. Paul and would be derived from
him. I Was the Passover, then, a sacrifice? It is true it was
not offered in the first instance under the usual conditions of
sacrifice, but the necessities of the case account for that. In
its original celebration, however, it was a true sacrifice, and
produced the appropriate effect, securing the "passing over"
of those who presented it. when the judgment of Jehovah went
through the land. In all subsequent observations the same char-
ar^ter was recognized : for it was appointed as a part of the
Passover ritual forever, that when the children should ask,
" What mean ye by this service ?" the fathers should answer,
" It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover." § Other passages
are as explicit as this. ||

On the other hand, St. Paul illustrates the nature of the
Lord's death by comparing it with the offerings made throughout
the world, in Gentile and in Hebrew religion, under the general
institution of sacrifice : " Christ hath loved us, and hath given
Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-
smelling savour." t Here are used two Urms, prosphor a and
thusia, of undoubtedly sacrificial import, the former being a
name for offerings of all kinds ; the latter, for sacrifices in which
atoning blood is shed. The same idea is involved in the descrip-
tion of Christ as a propitiation or propitiatory sacrifice {hilas-
terion).''^*

*Luke XV. 23,27.
^ Ex. xii. 26, 27.
^ Eph. V. 2.

1 1 Cor. X. 20. t Acts xiv. 13, 18.

II Ex. xxiii. 18; xxxiv. 25, Deut. xvi. 2, 4,5,6.
**Roni. iii. 25.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

The nature and intention of Sacrifice in general in the ancient
world, there is no need to explain. We have but to put our-
selves in the place of readers in Ephesns and Rome, and ask how
they must have understood such accounts of the death of the
Lord. For we are not to suppose that Paul was uttering words
with hidden meanings, for the curiosity and criticism of future
ages to discover, but that these letters were more immediately
intelligible to them who first read or heard them than they
are to us, because they had before their eyes the social, moral,
and religious conditions to which they referred, and which lighted
up their meaning. Jews would interpret such teachings in the
light of their own Scriptures and their traditional ideas : Gentiles,
who had been the devotees of religions which, <liffer as the/ may
in other respects, had the sacrificial character in common, v ould
understand the language of the Apostle in the substantial sense
in which they had been accustomed to employ it. It is conceded
to us that " the words used in these passages, if found in ordi-
nary Greek literature, might, without question, imply that very
doctrine of propitiation which" — as the author I am quoting
thinks — "it seems to be the very object of the revelation of God
to destroy ;" * and the use of them is defended on the ground
that the Apostles could not invent a vocabulary, but must em-
ploy words familiar to those to whom they wrote ; that thus they
were " obliged to use language that was already saturated with
falsehood; and which could not fail to convey those associations
which were precisely the errors which a Divine revelation was
intended to remove." f But by what was the necessity imposed?
By the subject of which they treated? or the language in which
they wrote? If there was no parallel between the death of
Christ and the sacrifices of the ancient world, if tl:e cliief ideas
involved in both were not the same, surely it was not necessary
to employ the language of the one to describe the other. If the
Atonement of Christ was only an appeal of the love of God to

*Kirku8: Orthodoxy, Scripture, and Reason, p. 163.
Vicarious Sacrifice, p. 522; Forgiveness and Law, p. 81.
f Kirkus : Orthodoxy, &c., p. 163.

See also Bushnell

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

»t

the heart of man, it was possible to say so without the use of
these misleading words. Love was not an idea foreign to ancient
thought; manifestations of it by acts of kindness were not un-
common in the social life of Greece and Rome : and there was a
language in daily use to express such ideas and describe such
conduct, which did not belong to the altar, nor remind those who
used it of avenging deities and propitiatory rites. Our modern
oj^ponents of vicarious sacrifice do not find it difficult to define
their various theories without the employment of the dan^rerous
words ; and the difference between them and the sacred writers
is hardly to be explained by the affluence of English and the
poverty of Greek. If the sacred writers themselves had given
any caution against ideas which their words would inevitably
suggest, tiiey would have prevented a long history of error,
and saved the cIhh-cIi from many a controversv ; and it was the
least they could have done. But we find St. Paul, with all his
zeal for the truth, with all his indignation at any departure from
the ])ure gospel of Christ, with all his care of statement and
labour of argument, employing language which, he must have
known, would mislead his readers, and — if lie could hav'e fore-
seen — would mislead the church for eighteen hundred years ;
and doing so, without the utterance of one warning word.

The comparison of this language of the New Testament with
the antliropological language in which God is spoken of in the
Old, does not support the argument of the objector. That lan-
guage was used by poet, priest, and prophet, not only because
the limitations of human thought and speech made it necessary,
but because, when it is discharged of its materialism — which, be
it remembered, the Jews did not infer from it — it directly ex-
presses a sublime truth, the only view of God which can satisfy
the intellect or heart of man. Not only can we form no concep-
tion of personality which is not suggested by our own nature ;
but personality in God and personality in man must, so far as
they lie parallel, be the same. Personality in God may infinitely
transcend personality in man, but it must include it. It must
be that as truly as it must be more. No better proof of this can

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

be demanded than the fact that all attempts to be rid of the
anthropological language and conception, end in the abandon-
ment of personality, and the adoption of pantheism, or the
" power not ourselves which makes for righteousness," or some
other of the abstractions which modern speculation j)roposes as
" ideal substitutes for God." In both the instances thus com-
pared, — God's mode of Being, Christ's work of Salvation, — and
their expression in the speech of men, it was the idea that de-
manded the language, and not the language that created the idea.

2. Another of these general terms is employed when Paul
attributes to Christ the effecting of Redemption.

This term {apolutrosis) may be used for deliverance, however
accomplished, or for deliverance by the ])ayment of a ransom.
The latter is the etymological and primary sense ; and in this
sense Paul uses it to describe the nature and effect of the work
of Christ. It is his favorite illustration; he uses it with great
frequency, and carries out the metaphor into many details.

Early in the history of the church, influential teachers, for-
getting that this is but one illustration out of many, and carrying
it into particulars where the Apostle did not lead them, framed
a doctrine of Atonement which taught that Christ paid a ransom
to the devil, and which continued to be generally held for a
thousand years, until the great intellect of Anselm gave cur-
rency to a more Scriptural view. It is, no doubt, with particular
reference to this subject that Macaulay says : " From the time of
Irenaeus a^id Origen down to the present day, there has not been
a single generation in which great divines have not been led into
the most absurd expositions ol Scripture, by mere incapacity to
dstinguish analogies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from
analogies metaphorical." * To which class does Paul's figure of
redemption belong ? to the proper or tho metaphorical, the rational
or the fanciful? to "analogies which are arguments," or "analo-
gies w 'lich are mere illustrations?" The argument of Coleridge,
endeavoring to show that this and other terms describe solely the
effect for man of the work of Christ,t assumes that it is a raeta-

* Essay on Lord Bacon.

t Coleridge : Aids to Eeflection, Harpers' ed., pp, 307-317.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

•m

phorical analogy, and also that the word "redemption" is used
in its weaker sense of deliverance simply. If St. Paul had used the
figure of redemption as a passing illustration and without added
particulai's, it might not have l)een easy to answer this and simi-
lar reasoning. But his use of the figure is so frequent and so
l)articular, that there can be no doubt that he describes both the
deliverance accomplished for man and the method by which it
was effected. For, he not only speaks in general terms of " the
redemption which is Christ Jesus,"* and indicates from what He
has redeemed men, " from all iniquity," f " from the curse of tiie
law," I but he asserts the reality of the redemption by declar-
ing that a real ransom was given, and by telling what that ransom
was: " Ye are bought with a price ;"§ "We have redemption
through His blood ;"|| "He hath purchased His church with
His own blood." T) This representation leaves no doubt that St.
Paul regarded the Atonement of Christ, effected by His death,
as an objective fact and the condition of man's forgiveness, and
not as a subjective process accomplished in the heart of man.

3. A third general term, in which St. Paul describes the
work of Christ, and one peculiar to him in this connection, is
Reconciliation.

The most important passage in which this account is given
of the redeeming work, is the closing part of the fifth chapter of
2 Corinthians. This and other passages** containing the same
form of expression, are often appealed to as teaching that the
Atonement is a subjective work, — the bringing of man into har-
mony with God by the soul-renewing power of Christ's self-
sacrificing love. It is not God that is reconciled — they say, — it
is man ; there is no propitiation, changing God's feeling and
attitude towards men ; there is a subduing and transforming
power flowing from the Cross, and changing man from enmity
to love, and this is the Atonement : " We were reconciled to
God;" "God hath reconciled us to Himself;" "God was in

*Rom. iii 24. f Titus ii. 14.

1 1 Cor. vi. 20 ; vii. 23. || Eph. i. 7 ; Col. i. 14.

** Rom. V. 10, 11. Eph. ii. 16. Col. i. 20, 21.

+ Gal. iii. 13.
^ Acts XX. 28.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

Christ, reconciling^ the world unto Himself." Plausible as this
reasoning may seem, it is based upon a very superficial interpre-
tation of the Apostle's words.

Reconciliation implies two parties, and a reciprocal work.
Where one side of the mutual work, and one of the parties to it,
are made prominent, it may be the party that has been wronged
and his disposition to forgive: and this, even when the form of
expression attributes the reconciliation to the other, the offend-
ing side. It is almost, perhaps quite, always so in Scripture.
Take, for example. Lev. vi. 30, where a word usually rendered
" to make atonement," is translated "to reconcile," and the refer-
ence is plainly to the propitiation of the offended ])arty.* When
the Lord tells him who brings his gift to the altar, and remem-
bers that he is not in true fraternal relations with his brother, to
go and "first be reconciled," f the meaning must be that he is
to seek his brother's forgiveness; for, first, it is said, " if thou
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee;" and,
second, if he were required only to lay aside his own angry feel-
ing, he could do so at the altar; but he is told to go and be
reconciled.

Turn now to the passages in which Paul uses this term in
description of the " Redemption that is in Christ Jesus," and it
will be found that the reconciliation — whatever may be the form
of expression — must be understood of God. " If when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son :" %
he is speaking of a time antecedent to our faith, and even our
knowledge of Christ. At that time Christ's death did not, it
could not, remove the enmity of man's heart against God : yet
it actually effected reconciliation. This, then, can only mean
that it put away God's displeasure, or lifted the just sentence of
His law from the destinv of man. Further: "reconciliation"
and "salvation" are distinguished, the certainty of tlie latter
being inferred from the reality of the former, and surely this
requires the same interpretation : for the hope of salvation is war-

♦ «

*See also 1 Sam. xxix. 4. Ezek. xlv. 16, 17.

X Rom. V. 10.

t Matt. V. 23, 24.

♦ «

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement. 29

ranted, not by our consciousness of being friendly towards God,
but by our knowledge that He is friendly towards us. And, yet
further, this verse is clearly an emphatic repetition, in varied
phraseology and more formal argument, of the thought contained
in the verse preceding: "Being now justified by His blood, we
shall be saved from wrath through Him." The two are parallel,
and one must interi)ret the other. The justification of the nintli
verse and the reconciliation of the tenth, though not precisely,
are yet substantially the same : both objective; one, the gift, the
other, the attitude, of God ; the latter, like the former, implying
the removal of God's displeasure from us, not the change of our
feeling towards God.

Coming now to the great passage which these references are
intended to illustrate,* we find that it includes and distinguishes
both parts of the reciprocal work of reconciliation. "God was
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself:" it was a recon-
ciliation affecting all equally. " He hath committed unto us the
word of reconciliation :" it is now proclaimed that men may avail
themselves of it. " God hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus
Christ:" it was done once for all, and we took no part in it.
" Be ye reconciled to God :" this remains to be done, and we must
be actors now. The reconciliation of God, previous to reconcilia-
tion in man, is further emphasized by a statement of its nature —
" not imputing their trespasses unto them ;" and of its ground
— " he hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin." The
teaching of the whole passage is clear and positive, that recon-
ciliation is primarily a change in God's relation to men, effected
by the Atonement of Christ, and that "the individual reconcilia-
tion to God is no other than the personal assumption of the
benefit of the general reconciliation." f

A recent Unitarian writer gives a candid interpretation of
this teaching of Paul. " It was only a part of what Paul taught
* * * that Jesus reconciled man to God. It was the expe-
rience of the Christian world that God also had been reconciled

*2Cor.v. 18-21.

t Pope : Compendium of Christian Theology, II., 287.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

to us. * * * Jt vvas not that in their understanding of Him,
God had been changed, but that His relation to man had
changed." * How then does he harmonize the teaching of tlie
Apostle with his own doctrine as a Unitarian ? He does not
attempt to do so, but saves his own creed by disowning the auth-
ority of the Apostle, and by claiming, as I understand him, for
himself and his fellow-believers, a spiritual development beyond
that of the man in whom Christ had been revealed : " We may
not feel any more the need of such comfort, but Paul and his
world did feel it; and there is a world far larger than our reli-
gious household which feels it to-day." t

All the passages, except one, in which St. Paul treats directly
of Atonement, have been included in the foregoing expositions ;
and we might now give a full and accurate summary of his doc-
trine. But the method by which we have been proceeding may
be objected to, and our conclusions declared invalid because
founded on interpretations of isolated texts. Paul would not
"recognize," says a Unitarian commentator, "or own as his writ-
ings. Epistles crumpled up, almost without regard to construction,
into chapters and verses ; * * * when read, read piecemeal,
iis if they constituted a charm ; when quoted, quoted in fragments,
ijroken from their place and connection, to point a sentence or
prop up a doctrine, as if they were independent proverbs, not
closely jointed links of a living and inseparable body. There is
no part of the sacred Scriptures so much injured by this mode of
treatment as the long sentences and close argumentation of the
Apostle Paul."t

To meet this objection, and to show that the general tenor of
the Apostle's writings involves the doctrine of Atonement which
particular passages have appeared to state, the consideration
of one of them has been hitherto omitted, that we may now
examine the greatest of texts in its connection in the greatest of
arguments and the greatest of books.

* Dr. Eufus Ellis in the Unitarian Review, January 1882, p. 16.
f Unitarian Review, January 1882, p. 17.
X Livermore : Commentary on Romans, p. 60.

* <•

* ^

i0>

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement. 31

V 4

* r

V. Among all passages of tlie Scriptures which treat either of
Atonement or Justification, the loms classicm is Rom. iii. 24-26,
a {)assage which derives its importance not only from the fulness
of its own statement, but from its relation to the discussion in
which it stands.

Paul had long desired to visit Rome* that he might see the
church founded by his own disciples, that he might have direct
fruits of his ministry in Rome also, and that he might build up
a powerful Christian organization in the Capital of the I]mpire,
whose influence on the fortunes of Christianity in the West he
could not but foresee. The long-deferred hope may be near its
fulfilment. When he shall have gone to Jerusalem with the collec-
tion made in Macedonia and Greece, his ministry in the East
will fo. the present be ended ; and then he proposes to travel to
the western limits of civilization, carrying the Gospel into Spain,
and taking Rome by the way. f But the future is uncertain, and
he goes " bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the
things which shall befall him there."| Whether his hope of a
personal ministry in Rome is realized or not, he feels it import-
ant that his teaching should be fully known there, and have the
seal of his own authority. Perhaps also he desires, before it is
too late, to put the cardinal doctrines of his Gospel in such formal
order and permanent record as may guard the interests of the
churches and the vital truths of Christianity, after he has fin-
ished his course. § No special circumstances in the Roman
church decide the matter or the form of his letter. There are
no heresies there which he will refute. He writes in no polemic
spirit, except as the unceasing conflict between Jewish Christian-
ity and his own, gave a polemic cast to his ministry in general.
He writes with deliberate intention to give full and formal
statement of "the Gospel, as to which his disciples had already
instructed them, in the entire connection of its constituent fun-
damental principles." II

*Roin. i. 10-13.
§ Rom. XV. 15, 16.

t Rom. XV. 23-25. J Acts xx. 22.

II Meyer : Commentary on Romans, Vol. 1, p. 31.

Saint Paitj/h Dcktuink of the Atonkment.

1. The theme of the (loctrlnal (livision of the letter is ex-
plicitly .stated at the he^inniii<5: it is "the Ili<^hteoiisiU',«s of
God" which is by faith and is revealed in the (jiosj)el.* The
citation immediately made from the Old Testament — "the jiiHt
shall live by faith" — recjuires that we understand "the righte-
ousness of God," not as an attribute of God, but as an ethical
relation to God, "the relation of being rit^ht into which man is
put by God." t That this righteousness which is of God (i.e.
from God) is a relation to God's law, opposed to the natural
relation of guilt and exposure to penalty, and not a state of j)er-
sonal holiness, is to be held as certain. It is imj)lied in the con-
trast immediately stated in the parallel clauses : " the righteous-
ness of God is revealed," " the wrath of God is revealed."
It is evidently the sense of the phrase where, in illustration of
the very topic which this verse proposes, Paul cites the great
typical case of Abraham, who "believed God, and it was counted
unto him for righteousness ;" | and where, by quoting the words
of David which, he says, " describe the blessedness of the man
unto whom God imputeth righteousness" — "Blessed are they
whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered" — he
makes righteousness synonymous with the forgiveness of sins. §
The one convincing proof of this, however, is the general tenor
of the argument we are now to trace. ||

The necessity of some special interposition of Divine grace to
effect this righteousness, is the jfirst point to be proved : and it
is proved by the portrayal of the wickedness, guilt, and ruin of
the world. Among the Gentiles, the law of nature and the nat-
ural conscience has been disobeyed, and tlirough disobedience,
obscured, until the whole Gentile world has so far fallen as to
have "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator." ^ This degradation
of their very religions has its counterpart in the degradation of

* Rom. i. 16, 17. f Meyer, in loco. X Rom. iv. 1-3. § Rom. iv. 6, 7.

II For .a similar analysis of St. Paul's argument, made with the same pur-
pose and in fuller detail, see The Atonement : R. W. Dale, M. A. ; Lecture VI.,
pp. 225-249. 1[ Rom. i. 19-25.

* ,*

Saint Paul'h DorTuiNE of the Atonement.

social and jn-ivatc life, in tlie wido-sproad prevalence of vicefl
whose very mention sullies the Apostle's page.* Yet the Gen-
tiles retain siiHicient of the light of conscience to be invested with
the character of moral responsibility, and to l)car the sense of
guilt: for they "know the judgment of God, that they which
commit such things are wortliy of death," and yet "not only do
the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." f

And what of the Jew? He has some advantage over the
Gentile, for "unto him were committed the oracles of God."|
He is aware of the advantage, and proud of it: "he rests upon
the law, and makes his boast of God, and is confident that he is
a light to them that are in darkness." § But God does not
approve men for their knowledge, or condemn them for their
ignorance: II He "will render to every man according to his
deeds." ^ If, while teaching others, he does not teach himself;
if, while boasting of the law, he breaks the law, the Jew disbe-
lieves God, and circumcision itself becomes the sign of guilt.**
What, then, are the facts in regard to him ? Is he better than
others who have not the law? So far from this, the picture
given of the corruption of the Gentile world is a mirror in whicii
he may see himself: "he that judges the other condemns him-
relf, for he does the same things." ff Let his own Scrii)tures
describe the state of both : " There is none righteous, * * *
they have all gone out of the way, * * * there is no fear
of God before their eyes." XX The Jew cannot evade the voice of
the accuser, for what his Scriptures say, they say to him : " VVhat-
sover the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law." §§
Thus, "the whole world is guilty before God, and by the deeds
of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight." || ||

With what feeling, then, must God regard the world ? How
will He, how must He treat it ? The Apostle gives the terrible
answer: "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,"H of the Gentile of

* Rom. i. 20-31. fRom. i. 32.

II Rom. ii. 12-16. IT Rom. ii. 6.

XI Rom. iii. 10-18. U Rom. iii. 19.

X Rom. iii. 2.
** Rom. ii. 21-23.
nil Rom. iii. 19, 20.

§ Rom. ii. 17-29.
ft Rom. ii. 1.
1[Tf Rom. i. 18.

Saint Pai^i/h Dcktrfnk of tifk Atoxemknt.

conrso, l)iit of the Jew even more; for he, hy tlie abiiHe of supe-
rior privilejijeH, *' trrnmiira up unto liiinself wrath against the day
of wrath and revehitioii of the rijijliteous judgment of God."*
Such are the ^uilt, the condenniation^ and tlie (h)om of tlie entire
world.

And now, to this world is revealed a "righteousness of
(»od," "apart from the law," "through faith in Jesus Christ." f
What is this righteousness? How is it effected ? Does it con-
serve the honour of (jJod, while it reveals His love? We have
reached the (Oimax of the A])ostle's argument, and we may ex-
pect a formal and careful statement of the glorious truth. He
makes it in the fullest expression of his doctrine of tiie Atone-
ment to be found in all his writings: "All have sinned, and
come short of the glory of God ; being justified freely by His
gra<'e through the redemjUion that is in Christ Jesus; whom God
hath set forth to l)e a propitiation through faith in His blood,
to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that arc
past, through the forbearance of God ; to declare, I say, at this
time His righteoutness ; that He might be just, and thejustifier
of him which believeth in Jesus.".!

Here we have, first, a brief statement that justification, or the
righteousness hitherto spoken of, ij a free gift of the grace of
(jlf)d ; and then a much longer statement of the medium through
which it is conferred, " the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

Now, let it be remembered, that the salvation for which the
argument of the Apostle has ]>reparcd the way, is an objective
gift, not a subjective work. It may i'-sue in a great renewal of
man's nature, — the Apostle aftervurds shows that it does, — but
he has not reached that subject yet , he is now concerned with
an outward deliverance, salvation as a fact of history, not salva-
tion as an experience of the heart. It is salvation from " the
wrath of God" which "is revealed from heaven," from the "in-
dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish [that shall come]
upon every soul of man that doeth evil ;" and this salvation has
been gained by Jesus Christ. An objective Atonement, there-

* Rom. ii. 5, (;, 8, 9. fRom. iii. 21, 22. J Rom. iii. 28-26.

Saint Paki/h DocrnrNR of thk Atonkment.

fore, made once for all, i.s the logieal i.< ue of the ApoHtle's
argument.

Tiiat thi« wilvation i.s hy a judgment of (Jod, chaiiging the
legal relations of men, and not by the Spirit of God ciianging
tlieir (!haracter; that it is a |)urely ohjeetive work, and therefore
ineonHintent with that view of the Atonement which repmsents it
as having for ils only end the renewal of the life of men, is further
male clear by tiie imj^ortant connection between the twenty-third
and twei,ty-fourth verses, for: "All have sinnetl and come short of
tiio glory of God." " To come short of," means "to be destitute
of." The same word {hm(ereo) is found in such pas.siges as "One
thing thou lackest,"* "Pie began to be in want,"t "I^t-'st any man
fail of the grace of Go(l."| "The glory (doxa) of God" 'is the
praise, the favour of God, as in tiie passages, " How can ye l)elieve
which receive honour (doxan) one of another ?"§ "Tiiey loved
the i)raise {do.van) of men more than the praise {doxan) of God."||
Then, also, the change of tenst is noticeable; "all have sinned"
(a i)ast fact), and "all are destitute (a present want) of he favour
of God." Now, this ])resent nee<l is met and filled by God's
grace: " Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemp-
tion that is in Christ Jesus." The conclusion is inevitable that
St. Paul is here contemplating, not the change of man's dispasi-
tion toward God, but the restoration of man to the favour of God,
and that, not by the renewal of his chara(!ter, but, notwithstand-
ing his character, on the ground of the Atonement of Christ.

The nature and relations of that Atonement he proceeds to
explain. It was provided by the love and wisdom of God :
" Whom God hath set forth," either " designed beforehand," as
many critics prefer, or, with our version and modern commenta-
tors in general, " set forth publickly." In either case, the death
of Christ was not merely the natural result of His collision with
the sinful and hostile forces of the world ; it was designed by
God as "a j)ropitiation " for the sins of man.

No efifbrt of criticism can remove the Sacrificial idea of this
word, "propitiation" (hilasterion). We may regard it as an
*Markx. 21. f L"ke xv. 14. JHeb.xii. 15. § John v. 44. || John xii. 43.

Saint Paui/s DoctrixVE of the Atonement.

iidjectivo used substantively, and read, with the Vulgate and the
Authorized Version, " a propitiation : " we may treat it as an
elliptieal expression and su[)ply a substantive, our choice being
between two; one {epithema) making it " mercy seat," tiie other
(//mmrt) riaking it "propitiatory sacrifice": or, finally, we may
avoid nice questions by retaining the adjective form, and reading,
with Morrison, " as propitiatory." Either reading, when modi-
fied by the clause " in his blood," contains the idea of sacrifice
and the idea of pro|)itiation. For, even if we adopt the render-
ing " mercy seat," the comparison will imply that as the mercy
seat, sjn'inkled with the blood of Atonement, inspired the Israel-
ite witii confidence in the mercy of God, so Christ, sprinkled with
His own blood, is the ground and pledge of forgiveness, and the
medium of a sinner's approach to God. But there are so many
reasons against this view* and in favor of supplying the alter-
native substantive, that the accomplished Unitarian scholar. Dr.
Noyes, translates, "Whom (jod hath set forth as a j)ropitiatory
sacrifice." The position of the expression, " in His blood," does
not affect the doctrinal teaching : for whether He was set forth
in His blood, or was j)ropitiatory through His bloo<l, or Is to be
received by faith in His blood, it follows that His l)lood, or
death, is the great propitiatory fact.

Paul then proceeds to declare the purpose of God in the
sacrifice of Christ, and the way in which that sacrifice avails
for tile forgiveness of sins. It is a manifestation, "a practical
proof," f of the rightet)usnegs of God in passing over the sins of
former times, and in now forgiving those who believe in Jesus
Christ. "The righteousness of God" in this place must, of
course, be an attribute of God. The following clause, "that He
might be just," settles that. But what attribute ? It must be His
administrative justice, and cannot be His goodness, or veracity,
or holiness, as sometimes suggested. The meaning of the Greek
• ord, the usage of the New Testament, the opposition in the
tii'th verse between "our unrighteousness" and "the righteous-
ness of God," the employment of the phrase in the preceding

* See Meyer, in loco. f Meyer : Commentary, in loco.

I >

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

discussion to denote the rii>ht relation of man to law, require
that now, when it denotes an attribute or character of God, its
meaning shall be " the right relation of God to law," i. e., his
rectoral or administrative justice. It is impossible that St. Paul
has suddenly introduced an essentially different meaning in the
very crisis of his argument. The propitiation of Christ, says
Paul, manifests, proves, vindicates the justice of God, and makes
it possible " that He might be just and the justifier of him that
believeth." The commentators often add, "i. e., that He might
be seen to be just." But why dilute the Apostle's meaning? Is
it not the evident implication that God could not he just, if He
justified men without the propitiation of Christ? The teaching,
then, of St. Paul in this great passage is that justification is not
the exercise of prerogative, that justice has imperative rights,
and that those rights are guarded by the atoning sacrifice of
Christ. The Atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the justice
of God.

3. Having seen the doctrinal import of this passage as fixed
bv its own terms and required by the argument Avhich culmi-
nates in it, let us see if the course of the discussion which suc-
ceeds it confirms our exposition.

There immediately follows a defence of faith as the condition
of partaking of the benefits of this redemption, illustrated par-
ticularly by the case of Abraham ; * and then Paul proceeds to
sum up the results of this plan of salvation by Christ. He first
mentions peace, and a certain hope of salvation for all who
believe ;t and then, as a second consequence, he infers a possi-
bility of salvation as universal as the eft'ects of Adam's fall : "As
by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemna-
tion ; even so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came
upon all men unto justification of life."| The meaning of this
cannot be mistaken ; or, at least, our choice must be between two
meanings, — the universal possibility and the universal reality of
salvation. In either case the Atonement is a universal blessing.

*Rom. iii. 27 — iv. 25. fRom. v. 1-11. JRodi. v. 18.

Saint Paii/s Doctrine of the Atonement.

On any moral tlioory of the At(Miement, none are benefited
by the work of Christ but those to whom it is made known. It
conferred no advantage upon the many generations tliat had lived
under the curse before Christ came; it brought no blessing to
tiie multitudes who since then have lived and died in ignorance
of Him ; and, dtiring the nineteen centuries of Christian history,
])erha])s not one twentieth of mankind have in any way been
benefited by that matchless work of love. But, on Paul's theory,
the entire race from Adam to the end has been blessed in Christ.
God's forbearance toward the sins that were past was justified in
Him ; (iod's forgiveness of sins in the present time is a righteous
act through Him ; and, to the ends of the earth and to the close
of time, a light of hope shines upon the spiritual condition and
])ros))ects of maid\ind : " the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life." No theory of the work of Christ but one
which recognizes an objective Atonement, removing obstacles to
salvation, and thus bringing a positive advantage to men inde-
pendently of faith and of knowledge, can sustain the logic of the
Apostle and save his argument from a most impotent conclusion.

From this deduction Paul advances to another, and in the
sixth and seventh chapters shows that, not only are the moral
character and the godly living of believers not endangered by
this method of salvation, but they are made more sure and per-
fect; and this, because Christ by his work of Atonement both
breaks the bondage of sin and inspires new and mighty motives
to obedience. There wis the uiore need of his doing this, because
it was already slanderously reported that he encouraged immor-
ality by his doctrine, and said '* Let us do evil that good may
(•onie." * Now, what was the theory of Atonement that suggested
such an accusation, and made it necessary in a brief treatise of
eleven chapters, handling a high argument and embracing many
connected themes, to ask the question, " \V hat shall we say then ?
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?"! ii»d to de-
vote so long a passage to the answer? The character of the
charge is a certificate of the character of the doctrine. If Paul

*Roni. iii. cS.

fRom. vi. 1.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

]

liad taught any of those views of Atonement which exclude its
vicarious character, such a charge had been impossible. Had he
thought and taught that the Atonement was the appointment of
love, but not the requirement of justice; that it was a movement
of the Divine love and holiness upon the heart of man, and that
alone ; that its one design was to renew the souls of men and
form them to holy character, by the portrait of human excellence
in the character of Jesus, and by the proof and power of Divine
compassion; then, no such representation of its effects as its
enemies made had ever been possible, and neither friend nor foe
had imagined the Apostle as saying : " Let us do evil that good
may come." But, if Paul taught that Christ was a sacrifice for
man to the justice of God, a substitute suffering in the room of
men and ex[)iating all human sin, tiien the inference, however
false in itself, would have some plausibilitv. His enemies, in
their effort to destroy his doctrine, have made it certain what that
doctrine was.

4. The passage which we have now been considering is the
only one in the Scriptures in which the need of Atonement is
grounded in the Justice of God ; and more than any other it has
shaped the church's doctrine of Atonement for eight hundred
years. This aspect of the subject, as a peculiarity of Paul's doc-
trine, is particularly deserving of notice.

It must be admitted that Paul does not sav that the design
of Christ's atoning work was to satisfy the Justice of God, but to
manifest it. But he does say — his whole argument culminates in
the assertion — that this manifestation was necessary to make for-
giveness right and possible, and that without it God could not
have been "just and the justifier" of men. The Justice of God,
therefore, made unconditional pardon impossible ; the condition
was supplied by the propitiation of Christ : and it follows that in
a very real sense, if not in the sense of Calvinism — in which the
doctrine is generally understood when it is attacked — Christ did
satisfy the Justice of God.

The term "Satisfiiction" is not found in the New Testament,
and appears but once in the Old.* The history of Christian doc-

* Numbers xxxv. 31, 32.

Saint Paul's Doctrinj: of the Atonement.

trine does not moot with it, in tlio sense with which we arc
familiar nntil tiie time of Ansclm. Ho made it so prominent in
Iiis Car Dem Homo, and that treatise made so deep an impression
on the course of theological thought, that thenceforward the doc-
trine of Satisfaction became one of the centres of controversy,
until it settled into its place as one of the articles of the general
faith.

The word is certainly liable to abuse. It suggests the idea
of the payment of debt in such a manner that no demand can be
made upon those in whose behalf it is rendered. Strictly inter-
preted, it is inconsistent with the universality of the Atonement,
or it requires universal actual salvation ; and it belongs proi)erly
to the Calvinistic system or to old-fashioned Universalism. It
is in such a connection that the doctrine of Satisfaction finds a
place in the scheme of Anselm. It was, in his view, the design
of God to make up, by the creation and redemption of man, the
ideal number of intelligent holy beings, a number which was not
completed by the creation of the angels, and was still further
lessened by the angelic fall. For " there is no question," he says,
"that intelligent nature which finds its happiness, both now and
forever, in the contemplation of God, was foreseen by him in a
certain reasonable and complete number, so that there would be
an unfitness in its being either loss or greater."* As modified
by Grotius in his "Defence of the Catholic Faith concerning the
Satisfaction of Christ," and as held by Arminians generally,
the doctrine of Satisfaction to the Justice of God loses the ob-
jectionable features : Christ truly satisfies Justice and answers
the end of Government in the punishment of sin ; but he does
this by the manifestation of God's righteousness through suffer-
ings which, for this end, were equivalent to the jjunishment of
sinners, but not that punishment itself. His Satisfaction makes
forgiveness possible to every man on condition of his repentance
and faith : it does not make forgiveness necessary in the case of
any man without the fulfilment of that condition. Still less does

*Anselm : Cur Dens Homo, Bk. I. chaps. lG-18. Translated in the Bib.
Sac, Oct. 18")4 and Jan. 1855.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of tiii: Atonement.

the use of the word " Satisfaction " by any school of theologians
imply — what the common use of it by men as expressive of
their own demands implies — the existence of a revengeful feel-
ing which prompts retaliation. The very willingness of God to
accept the mediating offices of another holds back the doctrine
from such an extreme. Yet, it is by such a misrepresentation of
the doctrine of Satisfaction that it is made the butt of the ob-
jector's scorn.

The great importance of the doctrine of Satisfaction, — Paul-
ine, Anselmic, and Grotian, — lies in the fact that it finds the
necessity of Atonement in the very nature of God. The treatise
of Grotius is sometimes charged with serious defect in referring
this necessity to the exigencies of government, and not to the
nature of God. But God's government derives its character from
His character : it is because He is what He is, that His moral
rule requires an Atonement for sin. Whether our statement refers
the need of Atonement to God's nature or God's administration,
it is in harmony with the Pauline doctrine that the Justice of
God requires the Atonement.

Justice is that attribute of God which first suggests itself
to the mind of man as a necessary constituent of His nature.
It is that which, without a revelation, most deeply impresses
him, and under whose shadow he lives and trembles. It is of
that Nature assures him ; for she tells him of inxorable law ;
slie warrants no hope of mercy. It is to that conscience testifies :
it points to a law, a Judge, a retribution ; it forbids the hope
of mercy. It is to the same conclusion, reflection comes. Justice
is seen to be necessary to the order of the universe; mercy is
not. Though we believe God to be merciful in his nature,
we see that in any given case He may exercise mercy or not,
as He sees fit and judges right. But, God being just, we
cannot think He may, in any particular case, be just or not,
as He may choose. He may say " I will iiave mercy on
whom I will have mercy :" He cannot say " I will be just to
whom I will be just." He may be merciful to the sinful, if He
can also be just; but He must be just even while "the justifier

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

of him that bclieveth." It must tlierefore be the case, that when
God forgives the sins of men, He does so in a way consistent
witli His justice. Therefore it does not surj)rise us, but meets
our deepest sense of right, when it is revealed that the Son of
God, in saving men from the penalty due their sins, does so in
such a manner as to satisfy, uphold, and honour the Justice of
(rod. "The Atonement" is thus "a Satisfaction for the ethical
nature of both God and man."*

Theories of the origin and nature of Conscience need not be
discussed, for they hardly affect our argument. The most recent
theory, which seeks to find a place for it in the general doctrine
of evolution, certainly does not. Let it be granted in full, and
after all it does not account for the faculty which })ronounces the
moral imperative — except as it accounts for the existence of man
— but for the character of those moral distinctions which are
made by men, and which may change with civilizations, with
philosophies, with religions, while the faculty which is properly
called Conscience remains the same. The existence of Conscience
jis a real and distinguishing faculty of man continues undisturbed;
and the faculty and its operations may as surely be made the
matter of observation and the basis of argument, as the contents
of consciousness in general, or the phenomena of the external
world.

On the commission of sin, arises immediately the sense of
guilt: the transgressor judges and condemns himself. This self-
condemnation is purely spontaneous. The will has no control
over it: it does not arise by effort; it cannot be driven away by
resolve. In other words, it is a part of man's very constitution ;
that is, it is implanted by God; that is, it is the voice of God,
and the reflection of His own nature, — it testifies to God and to
His moral rule. Now, this sentiment must be propitiated before
it can be pacified. It demands atonement for sin, before it can
jKirmit the sinner to rest. A report was lately given of the case
of a man who had stolen a large sum of money ; had been tried

* Shedd : Discourses and Essays. One of the Essays, to whicli this para-
{i;raph is indebted, has for its title the words quoted above.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

4;}

ICIl

out

Hits

ill

and acquitted ; had afterwanls restored the stolen property on
receiving a pledge timt he would never be exposed ; and yet,
months afterwards, surrendered himself to justice, because he
could have no peace until he accepted the consequences of his sin
and made atonement.* Now, in this instance, which, though ex-
treme, illustrates the feelings which exist in every case of wrong-
doing where the conscience is not seared, what was that authority
which the criminal sought to appease and satisfy by the act of
atonement ? It will not do to say that it was his own mind ; for if
a man could be sure that his crime, beginning in himself, was shut
up and ended there, he would not trouble himself with exterior
considerations. Nor could it be the persons he had defrauded :
he had made restitution to them, but was not satisfied. Nor
could it be the law of his country : that law had acquitted him
knew no claim against him, never could trouble him again ; and
yet he deliberately sought its penalties. The only answer that
meets the case is that it was the eternal law of right, speaking
through his conscience and asserting its claims. But a law un-
embodied and impersonal could assert no such claims, and inspire
no such dread ; and it could be no other than the law personal
and supreme. Thus the conscience testifies to the personality of
God, and bears witness to the need of Atonement.

This has been the testimony and demand of the conscience in
all nations and grades and ages of men. It cries out with pain
in the poetry of every land and every time. It spoke in the
voices of the prophets, and in the [)enitential Psalms, and in the
Hebrew ritual. It has spoken in every system of religion and
in all the Sacred Books of man :

"(^iit from the heart of nature rolled
This burden of the Bibles old." f

The ancient and continuous cry of the soul, — " How should man
be just with God ?"| — it is satisfied first, and only, and fully, in

* New York Christian Advocate, February 19th, 1882.
t Emerson: The Problem. The true reading is —

"Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old."
X Job ix. 2.

Saint Paul's DofTuixi: of the Atonement.

the Atonement of God's Hon. The man wlio feels tlie fact of his
sinfulness and perceives the (Miormity of sin, can take no easy
])ardon ; but he ean trust a pardon based upon the Atonement
of the Cross, and, while he feels that he is justified, believe that
(Jod is just. Then is the conscience

" purified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood Divine."*

The classification and analysis of the Apostle's teachings on
the great subject of Atonement which have now been given,
enable us to formulate his doctrine. It is, that by the appoint-
ment of the love of God, and freely obeying the impulse of His
own zeal for God's glory and His own compassion for men, the
Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself in the death of the Cross as
a Substitute and Sacrifice for the world, presenting to the righ-
teous Ruler of the universe an equivalent for the punishment of
sinners, and manifesting and magnifying before men the justice
and holiness of God ; and that, by thus securing the ends of a
holy government, he made possible to all men, on condition of
their repentance and faith, the pardon of their sins.

Oriections to St. Paul's doctrine of the Atonement may be
arranged undt^r two general heads, — those which relate to its
substance, and those which relate to its authorship. Objections
of the first kind are made both by those who recognize and those
who repudiate the authority of the Bible, the former contending
that the doctrine is not taught by the Apostle, and the latter of
(course considering it a matter of little moment whether he teaches
it or not.

1. Objections of the first kind have already, to some extent,
been noticed incidentally. It must be sufficient to add that
nearly all of them are based upon an imperfect or erroneous state-
ment of the doctrine. All the elements which have been discov-
ered in the Apostle's teaching are necessary, not only to fill out
his own conception, but to present the doctrine in a form accept-

*Cowper: Yardley Oak.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of thk Atonement. 45

able to the reason and the moral sense. Tliose objections which
are urged with the greatest emphasis, and tell with the greatest
force, are based for the most part upon partial statements of the
truth. The ignoring of some important particular invests the
objection with any plausibility it may possess. For instance, the
substitution of the innocent for the guilty is represented as an
immoral procedure. It may, indeed, be so; but whether it be so
will depend upon the circumstances of the case. In this case it
has not seemed so to the greatest number of intelligent Chris-
tians, to those in whom the moral sense has l)een most highly
educated, who have been most quick to feel the shame of injus-
tice and to blaze with indignation against it. What then makes
the difference between those to whom the doctrine is the most
affecting statement of both the justice and the love of God, and
those who make the objection ? It is that " the Christian body
has taken the doctrine as a whole, with all the light which the
different elements of it throw upon each other, while the objec-
tion has only fixed on one element in the doctrine, abstracted
from the others."* It has fastened attention upon the substitu-
tion of the innocent for the guilty; it has ignored the voluntari-
ness of the Victim and His relation to the Godhead.

A European city was being decimated by a plague so new to
the medical world that no means suggested by experience served
to stay its ravages, and so perilous to approach that no proper
study of it could be made. It was agreed among physicians that
until some expert should incur the danger and watch a case
through all its phases, the position was hopeless. Who would
do it? A young physician said, "I will make the observations
to-morrow." During the day he provided means to secure the
results of his study, said farewell to his friends, and calmly pre-
pared for death. In the morning he shut himself up with a new
victim of the plague, watched by him till the end, dissected the
body, made a perfect record of his observations, and then went
through the agony and died.

* Mozley : University Sermons, p. 162.

Saint Paii/s Doctrine of the Atonement.

The youu«^ |)Iiysi('iaii's devotion was a case of substitution :
ho took upon liiinsclf the sufforinj:^ some were enduring and
others must endure; lie died tlie death some were dying and
others must die ; he literally took the })lace of all those who,
hut for the knowledge of the pestilenee and the means of euring
it whieh he gained by the saeritiee of himself, must become its
prey. His substitution of hinjself for them was voluntary, and
was prompted by his love to men, or his devotion to seienee, or
both. It could not but command the admiration of all men and
the gratitude of those who knew they were saved by his death.
But suppose he was apjminted to the ])erilous office by the gov-
ernment of his country, ^or by a college of physicians and sur-
geons, being, however, left free to choose. Their appointment
could not detract from the merit of his sacrifice, nor impair its
influence, nor add one element of injustice to it.

The analogy is good as far as it goes, though of course it does
not go far enough, as no human analogy can. It fails of com-
pleteness i)artly because he sustained no such relation to those
who appointed him as Christ sustains to God. He was not one
with them; they sacrificed nothing in appointing him to die; yet
they did not violate justice, if they did not manifest love. But
God and Christ are one. Their community of nature and of in-
terest, and the perfect voluntariness of the Sufferer, silence the
charge of injustice, and accent at once the righteousness of law
and the royalty of love. This substitution, in the language of St.
Paul, "declares the righteousness" and "commends the love" of
(iod.

2. Objections of the second kind admit the Pauline character
of the doctrine, but maintain that he had no authority to imj)ose
it on the church ; that it was a private speculation, and an
addition of Paul to the Christianitv of Christ ; and that the
development of the doctrine in his own mind can be traced in
his epistles when arranged in chronological order.

In answer to the former of these assertions, it might be shown :

(1.) That Paul's doctrine of Atonement is harmonious with
that of the Lord, being but the fuller statement of it.*

*See Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark x. 45; John x. 11, 15, and other phices.

Saint Paui/s D(K'rRiNE of the Atonement.

(2.) Tliat such a fuller stutoincnt is what the nature of the
(•use required, and what the Lord's own words direct us to look
for. "I have yet many things to say unto you, Imt ye cannot
bear them now. Howbeit wiien He, the Spirit of truth, is come.
He will guide you into all truth. * * He shall glorify me ;
for He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you."*

(3.) That it is in harmony with the general plan of Revela-
tion, which is progressive.

This plan, not only in general, but in the particular relation
of the teachings of the Epistles to the contents of the Gosj»els,
justifies itself. The true doctrines of Christianity are not specu-
lations: they are the interpretation and application of historic
facts. The facts must have been accomplished before they could
be understood, their relation appreciated, and their doctrine
formed. Christ must die and rise again, and ascend and be
glorified, before His own disciples could understand their interest
in His humiliation, and the relation of His passion to them and
to the world. Without the Epistles, we should stand, in relation
to the Gospels, in much the same position in which the disciples
stood in relation to the life they saw and the words they heard.
And the Epistles are to us, in the understanding of the great
facts of the ministry of the Lord, what the revealing agency of
the Spirit was to them, f

But, to pass on to the other contention : it is maintained that
Paul's doctrine was not at first what it afterwards came to be;
that, at most, his earlier views of the death of Christ in relation
to man were nothing more than a general belief that in souie
vviiy — he did not say what, he did not know what — men were
benefited by the death of Christ; that, being led by the consti-
tution of his mind to seek a reason for every belief, a philosophy
for every fact, he gradually developed a theory of the Atonement
which, when finally formed in his mind, he stated in his later
Epistles. Even granting such a progress of doctrine in his own

*John xvi. 12-14
fFor a very satisfactory discussion of these points, see Bernard : Progr&'is
of Doctrine, especially Lects, I., III., VI. and VII.

Saint Paiti/h J)(m think of tin: Atonemknt.

mifid, it Is SI |)iiroly ^ratiiitoiiH nssortion timt tliis proirrcss was
ett(K't(Ml l)y tin; iii(l('|M'ii(U'nt Jiction of liis mind and not by tlio
jjjnidanoc of the Spirit of (Jod. It is of the very nutiiro of inspi-
ration not to suporscdi; the action of tlie liunian facndtios: for
then one man would l)e as j^ood as another as a medium of
Divine Revelation, and the wisdom so evichint in the selection
of a man like Paul, so variously endowed and so widely trained,
to be the chief teacher of Christian doctrine, entirely disappears.
It is its nature to blend with the human faculties in their normal
exercise, and bv its enliy-hteniny: and ijuidiny: influence to secure
the accuracy of the results.

Nor, if we grant such a i)rogress, is there any foundation for
the belief that in the course of this development St. Paul arrives
at a very different view froni that with which he started, that
his jirogress has been really a movement backward, and that his
final doctrine contradicts his first. It may be shown that his
doctrine in the amplest expositions of the later Ej)istles, is con-
tained in the briefer statements of the first, and is the only
development that could logically have been made : as from a
given seed, if it germinates at all, must come a certain tree.

A general case is supposed to be proved by the admissions of
the Apostle himself. To any argument based upon Phil. iii.
13-15, it is not necessary to refer: for there he is manifestly
speaking, not of j)rogrcss in knowledge and dcK'trine, but in
character and life. With more appearance of reason, however,
the declaration that he had " known Christ after the flesh, but
now henceforth would know Him so no more," * is appealed to
in proof of the Apostle's consciousness of an advance from a
lower to a higher j>lane of Christian thought. " He had known
CMirist after the flesh" — had understood and preached Him " in
a more Jewish and less spiritual manner than is possible to him
now or can ever be again:" "a remarkable confession," says
Dean Stanley, " of former weakness and error, and of conscious
j>rogress in religious knowledge." f

*2Cor. V. 16.

t Stanley : Epistles to the Corinthians, in loc.

Saint Paui/s DocruiNK of tiik Atonkmknt.

41)

The nieuniuf^ of this pMSHii^u may not, indeed, ho ol)vi«>ns to
the Huj)erfieial render; but there is an explanation of it, wliieh is
not only more natural and more in harmony with the line of the
Apostle's argument than that whleh makes him a discoverer in
theology, but which also sustains our position, that in regard to
the particular doctrine of Atonement by Christ, he held it at first
as he did at the last. He is speaking of the universal aspect of
tlie work of Christ, and de(!lares that it lias obliterated all ritual,
national, and historical distinctions. It is now a matter of per-
fect indifference whether a man be Jew or Gentile, has been
circumcised or has not, keeps the ritual of Moses or does not
keep it : " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature."* And
to give emphasis to his assertion that he as a preacher of the
Gospel does not regard these human distinc^tions, he says it is the
very same principle which lie applies in his view of Christ. He
had " known Him after tlie flesh :" he had dwelt upon the national
and historical character of the ^! ssiah ; he had been " an He-
brew of the Hebrews." But from the iiour when Jesus appeared
to him and he received the truth as it is in Him, all was
changed : he no longer looked for tlie Messiah of the Jews, but
he believed in Jesus as the Saviour of all men and the glorified
Lord of the world. His discovery of the truth was not gradual,
his conversion was the date of his change of view.

But, let us briefly look at the evidence of the facts in regard
to his supposed development of this particular doctrine of the
Atonement. For the maintenance of this proposition it is not
enough to show that different topics form the subject-matter of
the earlier and the later Epistles ; or that the same topics are
treated more elaborately in the one than in the other; but that
the same topics are presented in lights so different that the views
of the later Epistles could not have been held by the same mind,
at the same time with those of the former.

Remember that at the time of writing his first Epistle St.
Paul had reached the age of fifty, a time of life at which almost
every man who has given much thought to important subjects

* 2 Cor. V. 17.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of thp: Atonement.

1 ,1

has fixed at least the general character of his views; that he had
l)een fifteen years an Apostle and student of the Christian mys-
teries; and that within nine or ten years all his known writings
were [)roduced, — and how slight the antecedent probability of
such a development of doctrine is, will be apparent.

But let us go to the documents themselves. St. Paul's chief
work was not that of a writer of doctrinal treatises or pastoral
letters, but that of an itinerant preacher of the Gospel. He de-
livered his message by word of mouth ; and it is a purely gratu-
itous assumption that his verbal instructions did not contain all
the doctrinal matter to be found in his most elaborate letters.

Now it happens that his earliest letters — indeed all the letters
to churches, except two — were written to churches that he had
founded, that he had ministered to for weeks or months or even
yearsy and that were perfectly familiar with his teaching. Ac-
cordingly we find that in his letters to them, and to individuals
who had enjoyed the privilege of his personal teaching, he appeals
to his former ministry, of which no record is preserved, and ex-
horts them to remember his doctrine and to hold it fast: "Hold
fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me."*
When, after an absence of three or four years, he writes to the
church at (Jorinth with which he had spent at least eighteen
months, he reminds its members of the general character of his
])reaching : " 1 determined not to know anything among you
save Jesus Christ and Him crucified ;"t and yet more fully, "I
ileclare unto you, brethren, the Gospel which I preached unto you,
which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand j * * * for I
delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." | The
Epistle to the Galatians which is confidently appealed to as illus-
trating the development of St. Paul's doctrine in its later stages,
contains conclusive evidence to the contrary. For, what is the
purpose of this Epistle ? It is to re-establish and confirm them
in a doctrine which he had taught them, and from which they
are being led astray. T'le doctrine is one of such vital import-

* 2 Tim. i, 13. f 1 Cor. ii. 2. J 1 Cor. xv. 1-3.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

me.

)j *

ance, and the evil of forsaking it is so great, tliat lie writes with
a warmth of feeling, an enthusiasm for the truth, a lire of indig-
nation against the seducers, which find a parallel in no other
production of his pen : " I marvel that ye are so soon removed
from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel : which is not another ; but there be some that trouble
you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. But tiiough we,
or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than
that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed ;" *
"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should
not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been
evidently set forth, crucified among you?"t He contemplates
with bitter pain the ruin of his fair work by the substitution of
a spurious gospel for the pure truth he had taught : "After that
ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye
again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again
to be in bondage ? * * * I am afraid of vou lest I have bestowed
upon you labour in vain." | And the matter of the controversy
is this very subject of the Atonement, and, as connected with it.
Justification by Faith : "Ye are now being taught salvation by
works. I taught you salvation by the redemptive work of another.
No man is justified by the law in the sight of God. Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for
us ;" and all his statement of the vicarious work of Christ which
the Epistle contains, and which is asserted to be the theorizings
of a later Paul, as against the practical teaching of the earlier, is
claimed by him to be the very vital doctrine he had taught
among the churches of Galatia. And, be it remembered, this
preaching in Galatia was in the earlier months of his second mis-
sionary tour, and before the writing of his first letter.

Further: the very brevity of his statements in his early let-
ters to churches of his own founding, on a matter of such trans-
cendent importance as Christ's mediatorial work, — as for example
when in first Thessalonians he says, in passing, " Jesus, which
delivered us from the wrath to come;"§ and again, "God hath

* Gal. i. 6-8. t Gal. iii. 1. I Gal. iv. 9-11. § 1 Thess. i. 10.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

appoiiitod us to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who
(liod for us/'* — implies their knowledge of the fuller doctrine;
for otherwise, statements so strange and so short would have per-
plexed and disturbed them. But it may be reasonably urged
that these statements, while to those who had no othe^s, they
would be indefinite and confusing, did to them who had the oral
ministry, as they do to us who have the longer letters, contain in
brief the Apostle's doctrine of Atonement by the vicarious suifer-
ings of the Lord.

Once more : he distinctly repudiates the suggestion that his
doctrine was the final result of his speculations, or his own dis-
covery at any time whatever. He claims that he was taught it
by the Lord Himself: "I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel
which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither re-
(ieived it of man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ."!

Such then, if our expositions have been correct, is St. Paul's
doctrine of the Atonement ; and such are some of the reasons for
thinking it consonant with the intimations of conscience, and
with the eternal principles of justice and right. Does any one
say it belongs to a severe type of orthodoxy, and is not in har-
mony with the prevailing liberality of modern thought? Be it
so. That is a question for which we do not care in comparison
with others. It is St. Paul's : it is his Lord's. It is old : it is
also new. It has maintained its place in the Christian mind and
(Conscience through all Christian history: it has the promise of
the future. All other theories, however much they fascinate the
speculative, (iharm the so-called liberal, or flatter a nature that
rebels against the charge of sinfulness which the Pauline doctrine
makes against all men, are but side eddies of the stream ; while the
great current of Christian thought and doctrine, moving ever on-
ward, yet remembers and reveals from what fountain it has come.

Having gained a clear conception of this truth as it lay in
the mind of the Apostle and was expressed in his Epistles, we

* I Thess. V. 9, 10. f Gal. i. 11, 12.

Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Atonement.

may put our knowledge to several important uses. We may go
through the history of the doctrine in the church, and test the
accuracy of the successive phases through which it has passed.
We may also survey the field as it lies before us to-day, and dis-
cover where, in the various forms the doctrine now assumes, the
truth is most largely found.

But our subject is not only of speculative importance. As
churches are distinguished by their view of the Atonement, so,
and for that reason, are they distinguished by the nature and
range of their activities, and by the character and degree of their
influence on the world.

It is of profoundly personal interest too. The type of expe-
rience and character must be affected by a man's view of this
truth, and of the relation in which, in consequence of his view,
he believes that he stands to Christ.

In connection with this subject, more than all others, the

speculative should be held subordinate to, and made to promote,

the personal and practical. The spirit in which our inquiries

should be, and I trust have been, conducted, and the result to

which they should lead, are well expressed in the words of the

great Bishop Butler : " Some have endeavoured to explain the

efficacy of what Christ has done and suffered for us, beyond what

the Scripture has authorized : others, probably because they

could not explain it, have been for taking it away, and confining

His office as Redeemer of the world to His instruction, example,

and government of the church. * * * It is our wisdom thank-

fully to accept the benefit, by performing the conditions upon

which it is offered, on our part, without disputing how it was

procured on His." * The same Bishop Butler it was who, when

drawing near the final hour and the judgment throne, found no

peace in thinking of the careful habits of his life, or of the

splendid services he had given to the cause of truth ; but when

a Curate by his bed side, repeating Scripture words of hope and

comfort, read " The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us

from all sin," his face lighting up with a new and heavenly

* Butler's Analogy, Part II., Chap. V.

n-i!

ill

r, f i

54 Saint Paul's Doctrine of thk Atonkmext.

radiance, said, "I have read tliose words a tljoiisaiul times, Imt
I never felt their meaning as now."

" Jesus, Thy Blood and liigliteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lilt up my head.

Lord, I believe Thy precious Blood,
Which, at the Mercv-seat of God,
For ever doth for sinners plead.
For me, even for my soul, was shed.

Lord, I believe were sinners more
Than sands upon the ocean shore,
Thou hast for all a ransom paid.
For all a full A mement made.

When from the dust of death I rise,
To claim my mansion in the skies.
E'en then — this shall be all my plea,
Jesus hath lived, hath died for me."