same apostle states that He is "the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe" (1 Tim. iv. 10).1

Language such as that quoted under the two former heads (a and b) is surely incompatible with any theory that denies the objective value of the Atonement. To maintain that the whole value of the death of Christ lies in its effect upon the minds and hearts of men by the supreme revelation which it makes of the love of God is to evacuate the words of Scripture of their plain meaning, and to introduce a method of interpretation which, if permitted, will enable men to evade the force of the clearest declarations. That grave difficulties can be raised with regard to the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice cannot be denied. But they are largely due, not to the doctrine itself as set forth in Scripture, but to the way in which it has been presented by divines.

It is a fact to which everyday experience bears witness that mediation is a law of this life, that repentance and amendment are of themselves often wholly insufficient to prevent the penal consequences of misconduct, and that vicarious suffering does contribute largely to the relief of others. The argument, as stated by Butler in the fifth chapter of the second part of the Analogy is unanswerable; and therefore to a theist, who accepts the order of nature and the existing constitution of things as coming from the hand of God, there will be no difficulty in admitting that the same method holds good in regard to man's salvation, which he finds to obtain in regard to his temporal welfare. Difficulties concerning details may fairly be raised; but to the general principle no exception can fairly be taken.

Nor must it be forgotten that while vicarious suffering in the natural order of things is often compulsory and involuntary, the sacrifice of Christ was purely voluntary.

1 Cf. 1 Tim. ii. 4.

He gave Himself, Oblatus est quia ipse voluit. This does away altogether with any "injustice" as against the victim. There can be no injustice in laying on one that which He Himself wills to undertake. And, on the other hand, it must be carefully borne in mind that Holy Scripture is in no way responsible for those coarse and crude forms of presenting the doctrine, which give colour to the notion that it was an act of arbitrary substitution, the innocent suffering, and the guilty being let off scot-free. Throughout, Holy Scripture ever insists on the need of repentance on the part of the sinner, if he is to obtain the benefit of Christ's redemptive work. It teaches also that it was not merely "a man " who suffered. Had this been the case there might have been some ground for the notion that it was a purely arbitrary substitution of the innocent for the guilty. But the sufferer was "the man," the "Second Adam," the Head and Representative of the whole race, for which He is thereby qualified to become the sponsor (eyyvos). In the words of S. Irenæus: "As a man caused the fall, so a man must cause the restoration. He must be a man able to sum up (recapitulare) all the human species in Himself, so as to bear the punishment of all, and to render an obedience that will compensate for their innumerable acts of disobedience." 2

1Isa. liii. 7, in the Vulgate. As a translation the words cannot be defended, but they give grand expression to a truth of Scripture.

2 Irenæus, v. i. 1; cf. Norris, Rudiments of Theology, p. 59: "When the mystery of the Redeemer's Person is borne in mind, it almost ceases to be a mystery that His death should affect the whole human race. Every act of Christ must vibrate through humanity! If, in a plant, an injury to the root is felt in every branch; if in an army, it is not the captain only who conquers or is conquered, but every soldier with him ; if in all organic societies, when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if in the great family of mankind, the fall of one entailed the fall of all-then is it a strange thing that S. Paul thus judged, that if Christ died for all, then all died in Him?" See also Wilberforce on the Incarnation, ch. ii.

Again, objections of another kind, which are frequently raised, are only valid against an entire perversion of the scriptural doctrine. The Atonement has sometimes been represented as if it involved a discordance of will between the First and Second Persons of the blessed Trinity. Christian preachers have not always been careful in their language, and their teaching has sometimes given countenance to the idea that the Father was vengeful and longing to punish, while the Son was all mercy and tenderness; whereas Holy Scripture consistently represents the Atonement as an act of love on the part of the Father equally with the Son. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (S. John iii. 16). God" spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all" (Rom. viii. 32). And while we read of the "wrath" of God, we read also of "the wrath of the Lamb" (Rev. vi. 16).

These considerations may prove helpful in meeting some of the most obvious objections which are brought against the doctrine. It may not be possible out of the various notices of the Atonement in Scripture to form a complete and consistent theory that shall be entirely free from all difficulty. Nor is it necessary that the attempt to form such a theory should be made. From time to time various "schemes" have been advanced, and explanations offered which have been more or less widely accepted by divines. But none of them can claim the formal sanction of the Church as a whole. That which perhaps has been the most widely held of all is the patristic theory that by the fall Satan gained a "right" over man, and that man could therefore only be released. by a satisfaction of Satan's just claim. According to this view the death of Christ was regarded as the "price" or "ransom" paid to Satan to satisfy his claim. It has

1

been said that S. Irenæus was the first to suggest this view, which is further developed by Origen, and that it is the common explanation of the necessity for the death of Christ, which prevailed for nearly a thousand years in the Church, till the days of S. Anselm, in whose work Cur Deus Homo, it is for the first time expressly and unreservedly rejected. There is, perhaps, some exaggeration in this statement, but there can be no doubt that at one time the theory was very widely held. It rests, however, on an entire misunderstanding of the scriptural use of such figurative expressions as "ransom " and " purchase." It is quite certain from numerous passages in the Old Testament that to the Jew these terms would never have suggested the question "To whom was the the ransom paid?" as they suggested it in later days to Greek and Latin writers. The great event in their national history, which fixed for the Jews once for all their conception of redemption or ransom, was the exodus from Egypt. Then it was that God redeemed His people, delivered them from the house of bondage, purchased them, ransomed them. All these terms are freely used in Holy Scripture of the event. So in the Song of Moses we read:

"Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed ; LXX., Xuтpwow. . . . All the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of Thine arm they shall be still as a stone; till Thy people pass over, O Lord; till the people pass over which Thou hast purchased, ; LXX., ¿ktńow (Ex. xv. 13-16).3

1 See Oxenham's Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 126, and cf. p 167. 2 See Norris's Rudiments of Theology, p. 274 seq.

In the LXX. Xurpów occurs about seventy times of God's redemption of His people collectively or individually, occurring first in Ex. vi. 6. "I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm"; and representing the two Hebrew words and 79. Kráoμat is of much rarer occurrence. Besides

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This was the deliverance which fixed decisively the idea of redemption. God redeemed, ransomed, purchased His people; but there was nothing paid to Pharaoh or to the Egyptian taskmaster. Any thought of a sum of money or ransom, received by the power from which the captive is delivered, is wholly absent from the Old Testament conception of redemption. "It cannot be said," writes Bishop Westcott, "that God paid to the Egyptian oppressor any price for the redemption of His people. On the other hand, the idea of the exertion of a mighty force, the idea that the redemption costs much is everywhere present." Though there was no compensation of any kind paid to the Egyptian bondmaster there was clearly the interposition of something as a condition of deliverance the people were redeemed. Thus, when we remember how, all through the Old Testament, this great act of deliverance is spoken of as God's redemption or ransom of His people, we see at once that writers of the New Testament would naturally use similar language of its "perfect spiritual Antitype," the great act of deliverance from Satan's bondage which they connected with the cross of Jesus Christ; and that they would speak of the Church as redeemed or ransomed, by the precious blood of Christ, without any thought occurring to them of the question which disturbed men's minds in later times, to whom was the ransom paid-a question which has only arisen from a misconception, and from bringing in to the interpretation of Holy Scripture ideas which are totally foreign to it.

We shall be right, then, if we dismiss from our minds once for all the notion of a ransom paid to Satan. Nor need we shrink from resting content without attempting

Ex. xv. 16 (where Codex A has eλurpwow) it is used of God in Ps. lxxiii (lxxiv.) 2, and lxxvii. (lxxviii.) 54=7JR.

1 On the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 296.