been his rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved
would have been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain
deceive God as well as man.
These considerations have carried so great a weight with the most
enlightened and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that
there has grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an
atonement of agony and death is as complete as even we could wish.
They denounce with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "bloody
sacrifice," and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour
done to God by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that
dieth," or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there
is no virtue in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a
God." Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering
of the "well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the
Almighty Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and
graciousness of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral
and not a physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the
Father of spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory
also, that the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_
man, in order to make men acceptable to God. It is, perhaps, scarcely
fair to say this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad
Church divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox
to the Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that
while they have given up the error of thinking that the death of
Christ reconciles God to-us, they yet believe that his death, in
some mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a matter of deep
thankfulness that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating God,
and so prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching
reaches hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the
John Baptist of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an
atonement at all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation
by means of a mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between God and his
child, man; that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal
of humanity and propitiated God by showing what a man _could_ be, is
objectionable in that it represents God as needing to be taught what
were the capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the
powers of God in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities
of a simple man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties
surrounding a divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in
their theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent
with a reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some
unusual benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death
of a God, and are swayed alternately by their reason, which places
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