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CHAPTER X.

THE ATONEMENT, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE DETAILS OF THE SACRED NARRATIVE.

REGARDING the atonement as the development of the life that was in Christ I have now considered its nature in the light of that life, and the unity of a life has, I trust, been felt to belong to the exposition offered. But the life of Christ had an external history and took an outward form from the successive circumstances in which our Lord was placed, from the manger to the cross, according to the divine ordering of His path. And while this history can only be understood in the light of that inward life of which it has been the outward form, the contemplation of the outward form must help our understanding of the inward life; and if the view taken of the nature of the atonement be the true view must both confirm it and illustrate it.

We are thus prepared to find the outward course of life appointed for the Son of God as that in which He was to fulfil the purpose of doing the Father's will determined by the divine wisdom with special reference to that purpose. Another condition, also, we expect to find fulfilled in the circumstances in which the Son is seen witnessing for the Father, viz. that they shall accord with the testimony of the Father to the Son. The witnessing of the Son for the Father would have manifestly been incomplete as to us without the Father's seal to it. But this sealing was an essential part of the divine counsel,not only that outward testimony, however solemn and authoritative, which was in the words of the angel to Mary, the voice from heaven at the Lord's baptism by

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John, and again on the mount, but that also to which these special testimonies of the Father to the Son in humanity direct our minds, viz. that testimony of the Father to the Son in the Spirit which always is, and out of which all responsibility for faith in the Son of God arises, being that on which such faith must ultimately rest. With this testimony of the Father to the Son, as well as with the witnessing of the Son for the Father, the divine ordering of our Lord's path would necessarily accord; so that, although the aspect of that path, judged according to the flesh, might seem in contradiction to the words, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," seen in the light of God it would be known to harmonise with that acknowledgment. What would accord with the Father's testimony to the Son must manifestly be one with what would accord with the Son's honouring of the Father in our sight; so that we have not really here two conditions to be fulfilled, but one only; nor does the need-be that there should be fitting scope for the manifestation of brotherhood in relation to men, add any new element, seeing the unity of sonship towards God and brotherhood towards men. But it is important that we approach the consideration of the course of our Lord's life, realising that we are to contemplate it in relation equally to the Father's acknowledgment of the Son, and to the Son's witnessing for the Father," No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him."

This, therefore, is the aspect in which we are to contemplate the actual history of the work of redemption. We are to contemplate it as the Son's witnessing for the Father by the manifestation of sonship towards God and brotherhood towards men, in circumstances which divine wisdom ordained with reference to the perfection of that manifestation, and which we are to see in the light of the Father's testimony to the Son.

. As our Lord "increased in wisdom and stature," so the elements of the atonement gradually developed

themselves with the gradual development of His humanity, and corresponding development of the eternal life in His humanity. The sonship in Him was always perfect sonship. At no one moment could He have said more truly than at another, "The Son doeth nothing of Himself; but whatsoever things the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son likewise." But submitting at once, both to the Father's inward guidance, “opening His ear as the learner, morning by morning," and to His outward guidance, “not hiding His face from shame and spitting," Christ's inward life of love to His Father and love to His brethren was constantly acted upon by the circumstances appointed for Him, receiving its perfect development through them: so that, tracing our Lord's life as thus a visible contact with men while an invisible abiding in the bosom of the Father, and endeavouring to realise the bearing and operation of outward things upon His inward life, we may expect the light of the atonement to shine forth to us with increased clearness, as the light of that life which is the light of men.

We are not told much of the course of our Lord's life before He entered on His public ministry; we may say we have its general character in the words, He "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. His doing the Father's will, His following God as a dear child, had then that attraction in the eyes of men which goodness often has while it commends itself to men's consciences without making any positive demand upon themselves. And this record concerning our Lord,that at this time, and while His life was to men's eyes the simple filling of His place in relation to Joseph and Mary, and His kindred and neighbours, according to the perfect form of childhood and youth in a young Hebrew, He had the acknowledgment of human favour,-should put us on our guard against hastily concluding that the favour of men may not even now, in certain circumstances, follow the favour of God.

When, however, our Lord entered on His public ministry, and the words which He spake and the miracles

which he wrought constrained men to attend to and consider the demand which He made for His Father, and the condemnation on men which that righteous demand implied, we see the darkness soon disturbed by the light, and beginning to manifest its enmity to the light. Yet neither was this universal-and not only did some attach themselves to Him as immediate disciples and followers, but many more rejoiced in His teaching; and the response which His testimony had in their hearts commanded an outward acknowledgement of Him, which indeed was so general and so strong, that those in whom enmity was most moved were restrained as to the manifestation of their ill will by "the fear of the people." How superficial the hearing was with which the great multitudes that followed Him listened to His words, we know, both from His own care to warn them of the cost of discipleship, (Luke xiv. 25-33) which He saw they were not counting, and from the subsequent history of that favour, when the cry "Hosanna to the Son of David" so soon gave place to the cry, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." But doubtless between those who, as Peter says of himself and the rest, "forsook all and followed Him," and those who early set themselves against Him, knowing that His word condemned them, and that the acceptance of His teaching with the people would be the subverting of their own consequence and influence, there were many shades of feeling, the internal witness in men's hearts to the outward word of Him who spake as never man spake, being dealt with in many different measures of reverence and rebellion. On the whole, however, for a time the power of evil came forth but in measure; and though He could early say, "I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me," and though so much of even what was of another character was to Him who knew what was in man but a show of good which did not deceive Him, yet it was but gradually and towards the close that He had to taste in all its bitterness that enmity to God to which He was exposing Himself in coming to men in His Father's name. The public ministry of the Lord, with its mixed

character of favour and dishonour, of loud acclamations of those who at the least believed Him to be a teacher sent from God, and secret machinations of enemies whose malice could not calculate enough on sympathy to make its expression safe, was ordered of God to continue for a time; and no man could lay hands on Him, for His hour was not yet come."

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It was, however, but a brief time, much briefer than the previous period of private life in which the favour of men was conjoined with the favour of God; and it was followed by another distinctly marked period, of which the character is the patient endurance of all the full and perfected development of the enmity which the faithfulness of the previous testimony for the Father's name had awakened. This last is much the briefest division of our Lord's life on earth; and its darkest portion is to be measured by days, or rather by hours: as if He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him to the death for us, yet spared Him as much as possible, making the bitterest portion the briefest.

We cannot doubt the importance of that portion of the fulfilment of the purpose, "Lo I come to do thy will," which constitutes the private life of our Lord, antecedent to His entering upon His public ministry. The scantiness of the record is no reason for doing so. We know how that scantiness has been attempted to be compensated for by fictitious narratives, intended to meet the natural desire to know more of what was so large a proportion of our Lord's whole life on earth. But this has been a part of the error of not seeing that that life itself as it abides in Him who lived it and not the mere written record of that life is our unsearchable riches which we have in Christ. When the promise is fulfilled to us, that the Comforter would take of that which is Christ's, and shew it unto us, this acting of the Comforter is not limited to what is recorded. He takes from the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, stored up for all humanity in the humanity of the Son of God, revealing the life of Him who" was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,' in its relation