He did not-of course He did not-endure the damnation of sin. But in the bitter humiliation of a selfadopted consciousness of what sin-and therefore of what the damnation of sin-really is, He bowed His head to that which, as far as mortal experience can go, is so far, at least, the counterpart on earth of damnation that it is the extreme possibility of contradiction and destruction of self. He to whom, as the Life of life, all dying, all weakness, were an outrage to us inconceivable, bowed Himself to Death-Death in its outward form inflicted with all the contumely as of penal vengeance— Death inwardly accepted as the necessary climax of an experience of spiritual desolation, which, but to the inherently holy, would have been not only material but spiritual death. In mortal agony of body, in strain inconceivable, through the body, on the mind and the will, in isolation of spirit (man's true consciousness towards sin)-He died.

The consummation of penitence carried with it the straining, to their breaking, of the vital faculties, the dissolution of the mortal instrument. But that dissolution was the consummation of penitence; and the consummation of penitence is the consummation of righteousness by inherent power finally victorious through and over the utmost possibilities of sin.

Sin, when in its final struggle it had slain by inches that through which alone it could ever draw near to Him, in slaying what was mortal of Him had slain wholly itself. Where penitence has been consummated quite perfectly, that very consciousness, which was heaviness of spirit for sin, has become the consciousness of sin crushed, and dead. Sin slain, sin dead: this is in the sacrifice of penitence; this is in the death of the Cross. "Behold! the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!"

NOTE TO PAGE 131.

On the Cry upon the Cross.

I have received some very friendly censure for making this reference to the cry on the Cross, in so far as the reference implies a certain interpretation of that cry, which is thought to conflict with its deeper significance.

The suggestion, if I rightly understand it, is that the cry both in its own actual words, and still more when interpreted in context either with the 22nd psalm as a whole, or with the expostulatory tone which is characteristic (in a certain aspect) of the Old Testament prophets who prefigured the Messiah, is mainly a pleading to God against failure, and the sense of wrong in failure. That is to say that it is the cry as of a self-sacrificing righteousness which has not succeeded in that which was the very animating purpose of its sacrifice; that it is the cry of a protest, such as is familiar in Jeremiah, against unmerited failure,-the sense not of suffering only, but (as it were) of the demonstrated uselessness of suffering. In this view it would be emblematically represented not simply by the blended penitence, and withal tranquillity, of the mother dying of a broken heart; but rather by her additional consciousness (if so it were) in dying, that even this last surrender of herself had been in vain: for that the child, unmoved and un-won, had but fled contumaciously into further evil, so that the mother's very death seemed manifestly to have been for nothing.

It is further suggested that it may perhaps be conceived to be an inherent necessity of human consciousness of extreme self-sacrifice, before it can reach its own perfectness of consummation, that the vision of the mind should be clouded from seeing or feeling its own inalienable victory. It is true, no doubt, that, in the moral sphere at least, such sacrifice must, in its own essential nature, be triumphant. Yet it is conceivable that it may belong to the very climax of the trial in which such righteousness finally consummates its triumph, that the sense of victory should be obscured to the consciousness; that the sense of failure, and expostulation against failure, the sense of sacrifice thrown away, and suffering uselessly borne, may be a necessary ingredient in the bitterness of the cup of sacrifice.

And if it be objected that this, however conceivable as the very climax of trial in sinful and ignorant man, is not conceivable in the human consciousness which was the very expression of the Person of God: it may perhaps be answered that it is conceivable that it was

just for this that He divested Himself of the very qualities which were most His own; taking upon Him, by deliberate condescension, that very limitedness of imagination and knowledge which would constitute the supreme bitterness of His suffering in sacrifice: that, in a word, He most showed in this the sovereignty of His own character as God-by the extent to which He became, as it were, other than God, by the limitation even of His own clear insight and consciousness of self, for the purpose of making the cup of sacrifice full.

On all this I desire to make no other comment than that I do not feel called upon, because of it, to alter what is written in the text. It may all be true. I certainly am not disputing it. In some measure at least an interpretation which distinguishes infinity from finiteness, and insists upon the limitation of mortal faculties, must needs be in the direction of truth. But at the most it seems to me only to add a further thought to those which I had suggested before. It may make them incomplete, but it does not make them untrue; and if they are true, it is certainly not incompatible with them. It is obvious moreover to add that there are not any words, in the history of the world, whose meaning it would be so little reasonable to attempt, or expect, to exhaust, by any single strain of interpretation whatever.

CHAPTER VII

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE

AMONG the earliest, and among the most beautiful, of the pictures of the Risen Lord in the Gospel history is that in which He pleads with the warm-hearted but over-confident disciple, who had so misconceived, at the crisis, His purpose and character, and who had beenall good intentions notwithstanding-so easily beguiled into denying Him.

The question with which the Risen Christ challenges St Peter, and many a faint-hearted follower from the days of St Peter onwards,-is a question which turns wholly upon the reality of personal affection for Himself. "Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?"

And in truth there is illumination, as well as pathos, in the question. There is something in it which goes far beyond the touching associations, or the transitory accidents, of a merely personal piece of reminiscence. It has a world-wide reference. It touches an eternal principle. As the question which pierced to the depth of the contrite conscience of St Peter; as the question which set before him, in a moment, the challenge of the truly Christian life; as the test of his restoration to dutifulness and to apostleship; we feel that its words contain, or are capable, at the least, of representing, the inner secret of the life of the Church.

But there are times when we wander far enough from the simplicity of a relation to the Person and Cross of

Christ, which can be simply expressed as the dependence of a personal love. And even if the personal love were clearer and more devoted than it is, there are times when we should be perplexed to determine upon what exactly the personal love was based; or in what way the work of Christ -even if we dared be certain that we loved Him-made essential difference in ourselves. This then is the question which we approach in the present chapter. In what way does the atoning victory of Christ become an effective reality in ourselves? No Christian doubts that the Atonement is central, and vital, to the Christian creed. In the life, and in the death, of Jesus Christ, is the real heart's hope of every child of man. Yet we are perplexed oftentimes by conflicting theories, developed as interpretations of the Atonement; so perplexed, in some cases even so wronged, nay outraged, by the things that are said to us, that we stand some of us in doubt, not only whether we can possibly make it intelligible to our consciences, but even whether, after all, we ought to tolerate or receive it at all.

One primary difficulty to our thought is the conviction, naturally immovable, that, whatever happened on Calvary, did not happen to us. With what justice, with what reality, we inevitably ask, can we claim its attributes, or character, for our own? If in any sense it is true that Calvary, with all that Calvary involved,-Calvary, and the consummation of the sacrifice of the Crucified,-is the central fact in the history of the world: what, after all, putting make-believe aside, is the real relation of Calvary to me?

Whether we go to more ancient, or to more modern, forms of current explanation,-whether the paying of a ransom, or the cancelling of a debt, or the substitution of a victim, is our leading metaphor,-there is one thing which seems, at first sight, to belong alike to all views which start from the great historical event, and find their explanation