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CHAPTER V

THE COSMIC CROSS

HEORIES of atonement are devised to

reconcile the two great moral attributes

of God-His holiness and His love, in view of man's sin. How can God be both "just and the Justifier?" Justice and mercy have seemed to be almost irreconcilable enemies-opposites which could never be made to harmonize; for justice would seem to be the infliction of the penalty, mercy its remission.

An attempt will be made in these studies to show that Christ Jesus is Himself the revealed reconciliation of these two seemingly contradictory attributes of God; that in Him the holy love of God comes to its highest manifestation; that in Him certain cosmic laws find their fulfillment and their harmony. It may seem at first that the discussion is taking us far afield; but all paths will, we hope, meet at the Cross.

At the very first, therefore, let it be emphasized that the cross is not something which has been superimposed upon this human world. It has not rudely burst into the cosmic system like a flaming meteor coming from unknown regions beyond our planetary system, startling us a while, then passing out of all relation to us. The cross of Christ is the focus where fundamental and primal cosmic laws, seemingly divergent, meet and harmonize, as the dissevered colors of the spectrum may be gathered by a prism into one harmonious ray of white light. The cross is the culmination of the age-long cosmic process, the fulfilling of the law, not an artificial device to beat the world or the devil, or to lay a flattering unction to the divine conscience; for, indeed, some theories of the atonement come nigh unto making God guilty of the subterfuges by which a Chinaman "saves his face."

If the Creator has been vitally in His world from the beginning until now, certainly we should expect the cosmos to express that indwelling Mind. While humanity, as the upper

and

stratum of earthly creation, would reasonably be expected to manifest most clearly the divine thought or word, it would be strange indeed if all lower strata of creation should speak no whisper of God's moral character. The New Testament insists that the Christ is the Word of God through whom and unto whom all things have been created. "All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that hath been made the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us full of grace and truth." (John.) "God hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son through whom also He made the worlds." (Author of Hebrews.) "The Son of His love in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible all things have been created through Him and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist." (Paul.)

cosmos.

What can these great sayings mean, if not that the Christ of history is the human incarnation and focusing of the Logos that is in all creation from the beginning? The Christ-principle is, according to the Scriptures, in the whole The divine thought and character are on all things created. "Heaven and earth are full of His glory"—that is, His character. "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him;" but, though He has always been here, "the world knew Him not," because of its spiritual blindness.

Certainly, then, the cross is more than an incident of human history at a point of time. It is a cosmic principle; and this is what gives the death of Jesus its tremendous significance.