word punishment as used of the suffering of Christ; "it seems to me impossible to contemplate the agony of holiness and love in the realization of the evil of sin and of the misery of sinners, as penal suffering. Let my reader endeavour to realize the thought. The sufferer suffers what he suffers just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God, in causing such a divine experience in humanity, inflicting a punishment? There can be but one answer. I find myself shut up

to the conclusion, that while Christ suffered for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, what He suffered was not-because from its nature it could not be-a punishment." As to this last point we may doubt, not whether Dr Macleod Campbell is essentially right, but whether he is quite wise in simply rejecting the word. 'Punishment' need not simply mean retributive vengeance. To deny that our Lord's sufferings were in this sense penal is one thing. But it is another and more doubtful matter, to deny that they can be called penal in any sense at all.

What, then, is the real character of the atonement? Dr Macleod Campbell's answer will appear sufficiently from a comparison of the following passages. It is "the living manifestation of perfect sympathy in the Father's condemnation of sin."2 "I have already urged the impossibility of regarding as penal the sorrows of holy love endured in realizing our sin and misery." "The distinction between penal sufferings endured in meeting a demand of divine justice, and sufferings which are themselves the expression of the divine mind regarding our sins, and a manifestation by the Son of what our sins are to the Father's heart, is indeed very broad." "What a vindicating of the divine name, and of the character of the lawgiver, are the sufferings now contemplated, considered as themselves the manifestation in humanity of what our sins are to God, compared to that to which they are reduced if conceived of as a punishment inflicted by God!"5

"That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession

2

p. 117 (101).

mine.

p. 132 (113). The italics in this and the three following quotations are ⚫ p. 134 (115)

3

p. 133 (114).

4

' p. 133 (114).

"1

as to its own nature must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.' "That response has all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man,-a perfect sorrow-a perfect contrition-all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection, all-excepting the personal consciousness of sin;-and by that perfect response in Amen to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it. In contending 'that sin must be punished with an infinite punishment,' President Edwards says that 'God could not be just to Himself, without this vindication, unless there could be such a thing as a repentance, humiliation and sorrow for this (viz., sin) proportionable to the greatness of the majesty despised,'-for that there must needs be 'either an equivalent punishment or an equivalent sorrow and repentance'-' so,' he proceeds, 'sin must be punished with an infinite punishment,' thus assuming that the alternative of 'an equivalent sorrow and repentance' was out of the question. . . . Either of these courses should be regarded by Edwards as equally securing the vindication of the majesty and justice of God in pardoning sin. But the latter equivalent, which also is surely the higher and more excellent, being a moral and spiritual satisfaction, was, as we have now seen, of necessity present in Christ's dealing with the Father on our behalf."8 "A condemnation and confession of sin in humanity which should be a real Amen to the divine condemnation of sin, and commensurate with its evil and God's wrath against it, only became possible through the incarnation of the Son of God. But the incarnation of the Son of God not only made possible such a moral and spiritual expiation for sin as that of which the thought thus visited the mind of Edwards, but indeed caused that it must be." "There is much less spiritual apprehension necessary to the faith that God punishes sin, than to the faith that our sins do truly grieve God. Therefore, men more easily believe that Christ's sufferings show how God can punish sin, than that these sufferings are the divine feelings in relation to sin, made visible to us by being present in suffering flesh. Yet, however the former may terrify, the latter alone can purify."5

"We are now able to realize that the suffering we con

template is divine, while it is human; and that God is revealed in it and not merely in connection with it; God's righteousness and condemnation of sin, being in the suffering, and not merely what demands it,-God's love also being in the suffering, and not merely what submits to it. Christ's suffering being thus to us a form which the divine life in Christ took in connection with the circumstances in which He was placed, and not a penal infliction, coming on Him as from without, such words as ' He made His soul an offering for sin'-'He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself' By Himself He purged our sins,' grow full of light and the connection between what He is who makes atonement, and the atonement which He makes, reveals itself in a far other way than as men have spoken of the Divinity of the Saviour, regarding it either as a strength to endure infinite penal suffering, or a dignity to give adequacy of value to any measure of penal suffering however small. Not in these ways but in a far other way, is the person of Christ brought before us now as fixing attention upon the divine mind in humanity as that which alone could suffer, and which did suffer sufferings of a nature and virtue to purge our sins. By the word of His power all else was accomplished, by Himself He purged our sins-by the virtue that is in what He is; and thus is the atonement not only what was rendered possible by the incarnation, but itself a development of the incarnation."1 "The divine righteousness in Christ appearing on the part of man, and in humanity, met the divine righteousness in God condemning man's sin, by the true and righteous confession of its sinfulness uttered in humanity, and righteousness as in God was satisfied, and demanded no more than righteousness as in Christ thus presented."2 "That due repentance for sin, could such repentance indeed be, would expiate guilt, there is a strong testimony in the human heart, and so the first attempt at peace with God is an attempt at repentance, which attempt, indeed, becomes less and less hopeful, the longer and the more earnestly and honestly it is persevered in, but this, not because it comes to be felt that a true repentance would be rejected even if attained, but because its attainment is despaired of...." "We feel that such a repentance as we are supposing (ie. a repentance quite ideally and impossibly perfect) would be the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice, and that there would be more atoning worth in one tear of the true 1 p. 141-2 (122). 2 p. 143 (123). 8 p. 144 (124).

and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past would awaken in this now holy spirit, than in endless ages of penal woe."1 "In proportion as it is seen that that which expiates sin must be something that meets a demand of the divine righteousness, the superiority of a moral and spiritual atonement, consisting in the right response from humanity to the divine mind in relation to sin, becomes clear. But that superiority is surely rendered still more unequivocal when, from the conception of God as the righteous ruler, we ascend to that of God as the Father of spirits. It is then that we fully realize that there is no real fitness to atone for sin in penal sufferings, whether endured by ourselves or by another for us. Most clearly to the Father's feelings such sufferings would be no atonement; and yet are not these the feelings which call for an atonement, is it not to them that expiation is most righteously due?" 2 "What I thus labour to impress on the mind of my reader is, that the necessity for the atonement which we are contemplating was moral and spiritual, arising out of our relation to God as the Father of spirits; and not merely legal, arising out of our being under the law." 3

So he speaks of "the deep and fundamental distinction between the conception of Christ's enduring as a substitute the penalty of sin, and Christ's making in humanity the due moral and spiritual atonement for sin." "No doubt the perfect response from humanity to the divine mind in relation to our sins, which has been in Christ's confession of our sins before the Father, has been the due and proper expiation for that sin,—an expiation infinitely more glorifying to the law of God, than any penal suffering could be; but that confession, as it would not have been at all, but in connection with that intercession for the transgressors which laid hold of the divine mercy on our behalf, so neither would it have been the suitable and adequate atonement for our sin apart from its fitness to be reproduced in us, and the contemplated result of its being so reproduced ... here was the highest righteousness, the divine righteousness in humanity: but that righteousness could never have been accounted of in our favour, or be recognised as 'ours apart from our capacity of partaking in it; that is to say, apart from its being a righteousness in humanity, and, therefore, for all partaking in humanity."5 "If the eternal life given to us in Christ is that divine life in humanity in

which Christ made atonement for our sins, then the connection between the atonement and our participation in the life of Christ is not arbitrary but natural."1 "No result referable to simple Almightiness could be the same glory. That God should, by a miracle, change a rebellious child into a loving child, would be no such glory to God as that the knowledge of the fatherliness rebelled against should, by virtue of the excellence inherent in that fatherliness, accomplish this result. We love Him because He first loved us.' The power to quicken love in us is here ascribed to the love with which God regards us, considered simply as love." 2

Extracts such as these may be left to speak for themselves. To me it seems difficult to estimate too highly the debt which Christian thought owes to that reverent spirit whose insight has expressed itself in them. Nevertheless, it will really further our purpose to add some criticisms upon the book as it stands. Perhaps the leading criticism will be this: Dr Macleod Campbell appears to me to have discerned with more complete success the nature of the relation of Christ to God, than that of the relation of men to Christ. The identification of Christ with humanity, the ' recapitulation' of humanity in Christ, are aspects of truth which require to be dwelt upon with more emphasis, and perhaps with a more daring simplicity. I do not, of course, mean that this side of the truth is absent from his mind. Here, for instance, are a few passages which directly deal with it. "We are prepared, as to the prospective aspect of the atonement, to find that the perfect righteousness of the Son of God in humanity is itself the gift of God to us in Christ-to be ours as Christ is ours,-to be partaken in as He is partaken in,-to be our life as He is our life: instead of its being, as has been held, ours by imputation,-precious to us and our salvation, not in respect of what is inherent in it, but in respect of that to which it confers a legal title." "Abstractly considered, and viewed simply in itself, the divine righteousness that is in Christ must be recognized as a higher gift than any benefit it can be supposed to purchase." The honour done to God in humanity is "the revelation of an inestimable preciousness that was hidden in humanity. . . . the revealer of the Father is also the revealer of man, who was made in God's image humanity had this capacity only relatively, that is, as dwelt in by the Son of God; and, therefore, there was in the 1 p. xv (xviii). 3 * p. 340 (292). 3 p. 154 (132, 3). 'p. 154 (133).