CHAPTER IX. EXPIATION-ITS ORIGIN AND EFFECTS. IF the doctrine of expiation, as held by so many, has no foundation in Scripture, it is of some importance to consider how that doctrine arose. The word expiation' would be correctly used to express the case of a man who, having offended another, has so suffered in consequence that the anger of the offended person is satiated or disarmed at the sight of that suffering. In other words, his suffering has expiated his offence. Man by nature is revengeful, and when he suffers by the wilful act of another, seeks to make that person suffer in proportion as he has suffered, and his mind is relieved when the suffering has been inflicted. But this feeling on the part of the offended person is malice or revenge-a passion condemned by God in man, and utterly at variance with the holiness required by Him in man. A little reflection will convince anyone that it must be so. The sufferings of an offender in no way mitigate the consequences of his offence. The thief who has robbed a person of a precious treasure does not make good the loss by being imprisoned, and the only satisfaction to the injured person in his punishment, is the gratification of the evil passion of revenge. Nevertheless, the punishment of crime by law is not disapproved of by God. But law is passionless, and the punishment awarded by it is not to appease the angry feelings of the injured person, but for the safety of the community, to deter both the offender and others from repeating the crime. Indeed, it may so happen that the community who carry out the sentence may pity the criminal, and yet dare not, for its own sake, mitigate the punishment. What, then? Is the passion that is condemned in man by God, holy in Himself? Is it any satisfaction to Him that men should suffer for their sins? Not so. As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked' (Ezek. xxxiii. 11). God, who is Love, has said that He doth not afflict willingly, or grieve the children of men' (Lam. iii. 33). He has indeed said, 'Vengeance belongeth unto Me'; but the vengeance here spoken of is not the vengeance of malice, but the vengeance of law. He has made suffering to follow sin by a law which is designed to deter men from sin. Sin is, in fact, hedged round by suffering in the very nature of things, inasmuch as every departure from God must be a departure from good. The final punishment of all, viz., eternal death, -which is nothing more or less than eternal banishment from the presence of God, is the necessary fate of those who die in their sins; for, as in the case of the angels who sinned against full light and knowledge, repentance will then be impossible, and being wholly evil, they are in kindness to the rest of creation, which they would mar by their presence, kept in eternal restraint' (kolasis) 'from the presence of God.' If the sufferings of some in that state exceed those of others, it may be argued by analogy that it will be the necessary consequence of their sinning against greater light and knowledge. - Nothing contrary to this can be drawn from expressions in confessedly symbolical parts of Scripture, such as the Apocalypse, or from those passages where, in order to reduce the acts and ways of God to the level of man's comprehension, He is spoken of as if He had both the parts and passions of a man, in order to show, as by a parable, His repugnance to sin. Thus the idea of suffering expiating sin appears to be wholly contrary to the character and attributes of God. But God, in warning men against the danger of transgressing His laws, puts Himself in their position, and speaks of Himself as being angry at the transgression of those laws, and of repenting of the evil denounced, on the repentance of the transgressor. In this way He adapts His language, by the use of parable, to the understanding and knowledge of those whom He addresses, on the same principle as that by which, when speaking of the operations of the material world, He adapts His language to the scientific knowledge of the day. But in speaking of Himself as if He was actuated by the passions and impulses of finite beings, He speaks of the effects of sin merely as they would appear to be to men, and not as they are in reality. Just as the man of science uses popular language in his ordinary conversation with others, when he speaks of the sun rising or setting, while knowing that it does not move with reference to the earth. To use language strictly scientific under such circumstances would be to use an obscure means of communication, which would require laboured explanation before it would be generally understood. Yet this does not prevent him from stating the truth exactly when speaking scientifically. So likewise, although God makes use of the language best adapted to the understanding of men when speaking of His dealings with them, yet the Scripture does not fail at the same time to represent Him as He really is. It is perhaps impossible by a single expression to convey the idea of the repugnance of a perfectly holy infinite being to moral evil, and therefore the advantage is evident of using language drawn from human feelings and passions to express that repugnance, to bring it home to men's minds, teaching them, as by a parable, the terrible evil resulting from sin. But if in opposition to the other statements of Scripture, which represent the attributes of God as those of an infinite Being, wise, holy, and beneficent, and if, in spite of the evident reason for the use of such metaphorical expressions, people insist upon regarding the Creator as possessed of passions like men, and as being actuated by revenge, then it may be natural to think of Him as demanding some expiation for sin before forgiving it. But while expiation is that which men, animated by revenge and vindictiveness, require of those who injure them, it is not possible for an infinite Being to be influenced by it. The vain hope of expiating sin by suffering, which has always actuated the sinner untaught of God, is that which is expressly condemned by the prophet when he directs the man who proposes to give the fruit of his body, his own child, for the sin of his soul, not to the suffering of himself or of another for its expiation, but to the necessity and efficacy of faith and repentance on his own part. What doth the Lord require of thee,' he says, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?' (Micah vi. 8)—to be, in fact, just what faith in Christ, which worketh by love,' makes the Christian. All such efforts to expiate, or, as it is incorrectly termed, to atone for sin on the part of the sinner, are 'dead works,' or the works of those who are spiritually dead. They do not reconcile the sinner to God, who requires, not suffering, but repentance, and are therefore not only valueless in the sight of God, but evil in the highest degree. They are the root of errors which have filled the world with sin and suffering, which have bent men's necks to priestly tyranny, and have given force to those religious systems which have wrought such untold misery on the human race; which have caused murder to be regarded as righteousness, and fanaticism, madness, and superstition as holiness and heavenly wisdom. For expiation was the central feature of the ancient paganism, and suffering was regarded by its devotees as the only means by which the anger of the gods could be propitiated, and it was this belief which gave rise to those human sacrifices to Baal, Moloch, and other gods, in which children were sacrificed to expiate the sins of their parents, and men and women were put to the most cruel deaths to expiate the sins of the community. Hence, also, the pitiless self-torture to which many voluntarily subjected themselves, the value of which, in the sight of the gods, was thought to be so great that it came to be regarded as the highest form of holiness, and, as in the case of the Indian fakirs of modern times, those who performed the most severe penances and endured the greatest bodily tortures were reverenced as the possessors of the loftiest sanctity. Such was the religion of a world which the Apostle said lieth in wickedness,' for it was the religion of the god of this world.' It was especially to destroy these 'works of the devil,' under the influence of which humanity groaned, that Christ was manifested (1 John iii. 8). And, first and foremost, therefore, it was necessary to relieve men from the burden of an evil conscience, which impelled them to do these 'dead works' in order to satisfy that conscience. This result was immediately effected in the case of all who believed in Christ. It was not effected by proving in detail the evil of those dead works, but by declaring that actual deliverance from sin itself, which included the forgiveness which they had hitherto vainly endeavoured to |