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(p. 41)
THE ATONEMENT
‘WHOSE real should
coincide with the ideal.’ That, say you in your charming and appreciative
letter, would be an union of the finite and the
infinite, of man and God. And you go on to suggest that surely humanity cannot
have fallen far if it is able to rise to such contact.
Every
word you write to this effect is good and true, but you have not allowed your
perceptions to attain their furthest reach. Had you done so, you would not have
stopped short until you had arrived at the doctrine of the Atonement, developing
it out of your own intuitions, and without any revelation save that of reason
applied to your own faculty of idealisation.
And not
without revelation only, but without aught historical or concrete; but, given
solely your own consciousness of the abstract, and supposing only the existence
of the two elements – the real and the ideal – you will find your thought, when
allowed to go forward, reaching successively the stages of
(p. 42)
original
incarnation (or creation), fall, new incarnation (or second creation), and
atonement.
It is
not, however, in the meaning popularly ascribed to it, and for which you express
such strong aversion, that this doctrine is true.
For, in the first place, no doctrine respecting the Divine Nature that is repulsive to the human intuitions, or sense of perfection, can be true. Startling as this may appear, it is a simple truism. By the divine we mean only the ideal perfection of which the soul alone is cognisant. That perfection personified is God. If repulsive to our sense of perfection, it is not God.
In the second place it is not logical, and therefore cannot conduct us to that higher esoteric doctrine which the Church reserves for a chosen few.
The atonement signifies simply the mutual reconciliation between the Maker and his work, first through that work proving equal to its Maker’s intention, and so winning his approbation; and, secondly, through the work, no longer conscious of failure, and of cause for alienation, becoming reconciled to its Maker.
This last may be otherwise elucidated. Taking God for the ideal, and nature or humanity for the real, the union of the two in one person constitutes in itself a reconciliation or atonement. It is the longing of humanity thus to find itself in harmony with the object of its highest conceptions, that has ever
(p. 43)
and again
prompted it to select from the race some individual
preeminent
for his goodness, and to ascribe to him a divine origin and character. Thus it
has come that wherever a man has appeared whom his fellows deemed so far above
themselves in any direction as to indicate the possession of an element of
infinity, they have straightway held him as inspired by the divine spirit, and
as being, in a greater or less degree, God as well as man.
That the last member of the race thus deified by any considerable section of
mankind, should have been the Jesus of the New Testament, is not surprising when
we take into account the character and history of him which have been presented
to us. We may seek in vain among other deified men for so many and so lofty
elements of infinity. In him the religious genius seems to have culminated to
such an extent as in a great measure to obliterate his local and national
characteristics. His sense of ideal perfection raised him above the limitations
of his deified predecessors. Especially as drawn by John and Paul, was there in
him an universality that entitled him to the
appellation of Son, not of
(p. 44)
And this brings me
to a point of vast importance in determining how it came that such a character
should have emanated from a race so intensely bigoted and exclusive as the Jews.
The quality which made them emphatically a peculiar people was that of
spirituality, or appreciation of the personal and divine in Deity. In them God
was above all things the Moral Governor of the universe, so far as they
comprehended morality, and it was through men’s hearts and minds that he made
his presence specially felt. Of course there is much in their earlier history
and literature that conflicts with this high conception
of Deity. Many and many a time is the portraiture coarse and revolting, and such
as only a people whose ideal scarcely transcended their own lowest real, could
have devised. In fact, so various are their delineations of him, that it is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that they worshipped two distinct divinities
under the same name. I will in my next dwell a little on this, as it will
explain much that perplexes honest enquirers, and account for many a theological
contradiction.
In the present I will content myself with remarking that even in their earliest
compositions there are gleams of a pure and lofty ideal, gleams which grow and
brighten as misfortunes thicken on their race, showing them to be no exception
to the rule that all products of nature, whether human or material,
(p. 45)
require to be
wrought with toil and trial in order to attain their highest value. And so, when
place and power were lost, and servitude had become their inheritance,
(p. 46)
THE TWO JEHOVAHS
THE two
Gods of the Bible, of whom I promised to give you some account, must be referred
to the antagonistic influences of the real and the ideal in man’s nature. Though
existing side by side throughout the whole of the sacred literature, and passing
under the same name, there is no difficulty in discerning between them. In one
we have a Being of amazing selfishness and ferocity, owning responsibility to no
moral law, and absolutely revelling in blood.
The other is a just judge and ruler over all, yet pitiful and of tender mercy, a hearer of prayer, and one that doth not willingly afflict the children of men. It is to the coexistence in the Bible of these two presentments of Deity, and the failure of the worshippers of the letter to distinguish between them, that the theological troubles of Christendom and the comparative failure of Christianity are in great measure due. For, so far from referring the existence of the inferior Jehovah to the propensity of undeveloped
(p. 47)
man to make
his God after the image of his own lower nature, the Church, rather than weaken
the authority of the letter of Scripture, has sought to sanctify even the most
revolting doctrines by ascribing to them a spiritual signification.
The truth is that so long as the gross and brutal predominate in the character
of man, they will predominate in that of the God recognised by man. Only as the
things of sense give place to the things of the spirit, and the ideal assumes
its proper supremacy over the real, does the Deity emerge from his low estate,
and shedding the grosser nature with which he has
hitherto been invested, shine forth as the sun in his glory, the absolute
realisation of man’s developed moral conceptions.
How low and rudimentary humanity still is, even among peoples we regard as
highly civilised, is demonstrated by the reception still widely accorded to the
grosser interpretations of the doctrine of atonement by blood. The term
carnivorous is in no way too strong to express the character thus ascribed to
the Deity himself. As if expressly to illustrate the inveterate coordination
subsisting between man and his gods, the Bible exhibits in strong relief the
continuity of both natures. The carnal God of the Old Testament survives in the
carnal God of the New; and the spiritual God of the Old Testament survives in
the spiritual God of the New.
(p. 48)
Let us glance shortly at their respective careers. Throughout the Old Testament we find the lower Jehovah depicted as abandoned to falsehood and cruelty, and ever ready for a bribe of blood to aid the foulest cause. For his consent to offer up his only son as a burnt offering, Abraham is repeatedly lauded as the father of the faithful and friend of God. For a promise which involves a like fate to his daughter, Jepthah obtains the desired victory. And even the Moabite King Mesha gains a victory over the Jews in virtue of his offering up his son as a sacrifice. David, on a mere surmise, hanged the seven sons and grandsons of Saul ‘in the hill before the Lord,’ ‘and after that God was entreated for the land.’ He puts a lying spirit into the mouth of his prophets, and threatens to destroy those who are deceived by them. He denounces the most tremendous penalties for the lightest offences. Nothing can satiate his propensity for blood, and the idea of the sanctity of life is utterly scouted. Blood of animals innumerable; blood of peoples hostile to his own people; blood of offenders among his own people; blood of unoffending men, women, and children even, also among his own chosen people. Because some of them look into the ark, he smites fifty thousand three score and ten men. By the mouth of one of his prophets he declares, ‘I also will deal in fury; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity. And though they
(p. 49)
cry in mine
ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.’ To another he says, ‘Go
through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay
utterly old and young, both maids and little children and women, and begin at my
sanctuary.’
Passing to the New Testament, its continuity with the Old in respect of this
deity is indisputable, and the propensity is carried to a height previously
unimaginable. No Jew in Old Testament times thought of God as a possible parent,
except in a general way of the human race. But the Dualism veiled under the name
that was too sacred to be uttered, had in the interval borne its fruit; and
after glutting himself with the blood of the firstborn sons of mere men, this
deity found himself at length in a position to require the blood of his own
‘only-begotten beloved Son.’ The plea on which this stupendous sacrifice was
demanded was the pardon of mankind. But so far from their condition being
ameliorated, no sooner was it consummated than the bulk of the human race found
themselves in a worse plight than before. The Old Testament consigns no one to
eternal punishment, nor does it make penal the honest conclusions of the
understanding. The New Testament, on the contrary, abounds in dire menaces not
only against evildoers but against independent thinkers. Here the deity appears
as
(p. 50)
inflicting
torture for torture’s sake, without any pretence of reforming the offender or
promoting the security of society. ‘The unbelieving and the abominable’ are
placed in the same category, and both ‘have their portion in the lake that
burneth with fire and brimstone,’ ‘where their worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,’ and where there is ‘weeping and
gnashing of teeth.’
It is the love of blood evinced by this the lower deity of the Jews that
Christians recognise and sanction when they receive in the gross material sense
the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.
Far different is the character of the Jehovah who has won for the Jews the
credit of being endowed with a transcendant genius for
religion. In him all the noblest attributes of humanity reach their highest
expression. For he is ‘a God of truth, and without iniquity,’ whose ‘ways are
equal,’ and who is ‘no respecter of persons:’ a ‘God of peace’ and hater of
violence, who takes no delight in the blood of animals, but ‘whose name is
holy,’ who ‘dwells in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the contrite, and to revive
the heart of the humble.’ A God, moreover, who so loved the world that he sent
his Son to save it; a God whom that Son called Love, and of whom he declared,
‘If a man love me and keep my words, my Father will love him, and
(p. 51)
we will
come unto him, and make our abode with him.’
There is a sense, however, in which the shedding of blood is necessary to
procure a full reconciliation between the soul and its absolute ideal. For how
can humanity justify itself to the Supreme Perfection, save by showing itself
capable of attaining the loftiest reaches of moral heroism? And how can such
heroism be shown but by being ‘faithful unto death?’
(p. 52)
GOD-MAN AND MAN-GOD
THERE was a
manifest consistency in the destiny that assigned to the Jewish race the honour
of producing him who has filled for mankind the part of ideal man. Its
character, its history, its literature, all combined to make it fitting that, as
the Hebrew mind had attained a conception of spirituality and righteousness far
beyond that of any other people, so the Hebrew race should produce the
individual in whom spirituality and righteousness culminated to such a degree as
to make mankind see in him the realisation of its highest ideal.
Let us proceed to trace the lineaments of the ideal man, not according to any
supposed historic outline, but as evolved necessarily from our consciousness
when once the notion of such a being has occurred to us.
The ideal, as you already understand, being in the imagination the equivalent of
the infinite, the ideal man must have his origin and habitat in that region; and
on all sides of his nature he must appear
(p. 53)
divested of the
limitations of the real, and endowed with the element of infinity. In every
particular of his history he must show himself superior to the race of ordinary
men. His very coming into existence must be by no vulgar method; for of him the
supernatural alone is worthy. Yet, proceeding immediately from the supreme
personified ideal whom we call God, and therefore
himself God, he must, to be man also, derive one half of his being from a human
source. So palpable is the necessity for this, that the legends of all religions
recognise it, and many of them agree in representing their divine men as born of
virgin mothers. For the ideal man postulates the ideal woman; the woman who,
like her ideal spouse the Holy Spirit, and ideal son, surpasses the limitations
of the real, and without human assistance produces her ideal babe.
Son at once of humanity and deity, he must possess in perfection the
characteristics of both natures, and these so balanced that none can say which
predominates in him. Animated with the divine enthusiasm of the perfection from
which he is sprung, he will go forth to do battle against all the powers of
evil, or man’s lower nature, by stimulating the growth of the ideal, and so
reducing the real to its proper level. Not, however, by dint of physical force;
that itself would constitute an appeal to and alliance with the very power he
desires to subdue;
(p. 54)
but by
setting forth the rule of perfection, and exhibiting it in himself in so winning
a guise as to draw perforce unto himself all who are amenable to such sweet and
spiritual influences.
As his mission must be the highest imaginable by man, he must for its
accomplishment be invested with powers transcending those attainable by man. At
his command must be all the elements of physical nature. Earth, sea, air, and
fire, heaven and hell, must obey him. The very demons must acknowledge his
supremacy; disease and death must flee his approach.
God though he be, he is still man, and as man he must suffer and
die. But it is by his death that his divinity is most triumphantly
demonstrated. For it is by his death that he crowns his life, and exhibits in
supreme degree the love of perfection as his ruling passion. Mighty as has been
his enthusiasm of humanity in the real, his enthusiasm of ideal perfection far
exceeds it. For the ideal perfection, caught up and resumed in an infinite
personality, is no other than his Father, God.
Yes, it is for love of God even more than for love of man,
that
the Man-God suffers and dies. So vivid is his sense of the personality and
presence of the Divine Perfection, and of his own intimate relationship thereto,
that he speaks ever of him in the most endearing terms, aspiring ever to his
presence,
(p. 55)
and so
shapes his speech as to imply identity of being with him – ‘My Father and I are
one;’ ‘No man cometh to the Father but by me;’ ‘I am the way, the truth, and the
life;’ ‘He that has seen me hath seen the Father also.’
As the ideal Son must have existed, either actually or potentially, in the bosom
of the ideal Father, he must be coeternal with him and coequal, and the same
divine disposition or spirit that animates them must proceed alike from both.
But while eternal in his ideal nature, he must be subject to death in his real.
And inasmuch as by his death he reconciles the real to its Creator, his blood is
for the healing of the nations, his suffering for their salvation.
For his death is the crowning proof of his thoroughness. Infinite would be the
loss to mankind were he to shrink from such consummation. For then would
humanity exhibit itself as incapable of attaining perfection even in its ideal.
Unable to imagine such unselfish devotion as possible, it would have shown
itself to belong to but a low degree in the scale of moral existence. The
capacity to imagine and appreciate self-sacrifice involves the capacity for
self-sacrifice. Our whole real is elevated by the exaltation of our ideal; and
the supreme ideal is reconciled and propitiated thereby. Humanity, in virtue of
the perfect ideal it has produced, takes its
(p. 56)
seat at the
right hand of the Absolute Perfection, and claims the enthusiastic greeting, ‘My
beloved Son! in whom I am well pleased!’
For it has attained perfection, and the divine work of creation is ‘finished.’
God though we may be disposed to deem him, it is as man and man alone, though
man perfect, that the ideal Son achieves for us his victory. His triumph is the
triumph of humanity. For he represents man’s ideal side rising superior to his
real, inasmuch as he accomplishes the sacrifice of sense to spirit, of body to
soul, the lower to the higher, the phenomenal to the eternal, the limited to the
infinite.
To comprehend the nature of the Son of Man, you must comprehend the nature of
man. Two elements go to the making up of this, the real and the ideal. Discard
the notion that either of them is in the popular sense supernatural. This done,
the divine man readily appears as he in whom both these sides of humanity are
perfect; but in whom also the real occupies its proper place of subordination to
the ideal, or sense to spirit.
It is only in respect of its transcending sense, or the ‘natural,’ that the
ideal can be regarded as supernatural. We have no warrant for regarding any part
of existence, real or ideal, as lying outside of nature. No possible redeemer
can the ideal man be for us unless he be identical with that which he comes to
redeem, one of ourselves, – save without defect.
(p. 57)
For, otherwise, his
very perfection would but enhance the disfavour with which the Creator regarded
his work. The demonstration that other elements than those contained in humanity
are necessary to produce a perfect man, would involve a confession of impotence
in the original creation. And so far from the divine work being finished in him,
and he being greeted as the beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased, and
suffered to ascend on high, and, crowned with honour and glory, to take his
place at the right hand of God, he would be to the Father a constant source of
mortification, as a reminder of his failure in the first creation.
No Saviour or Redeemer in such case would he be for us; no maker of peace by his
blood; no reconciler with God.
It is, then, not at the incarnation as an isolated or historical event, or as
restricted to any one period of time, that we arrive in our process of
constructing God in our own image, and in following the theology that naturally
evolves itself there from. But we arrive at the incarnation as a perpetual
demonstration of the capacity of nature for attaining perfection on its ideal
side. The existence of perfection anywhere in nature, whether
in you or in me, demonstrates the divinity of creation, and so ‘saves’ the
world. And he who is most perfect does this in greatest degree.
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