"The law that suffering is divine, [Greek: to kalon pathein], is verified in the experience of the soul. Now Christ's death is the supreme instance of that law. The power of Gethsemane and Calvary, in the light of such a law, needs no explanation. They open the heart as nothing else ever did. We know that whatever reservations we make for ourselves, whatever our own shrinking from utter self-sacrifice, Christ, living in perfect accordance with the laws of spiritual health and perfection, could not do other than die. Thus without any thought of payment or expiation, with no vestige of separation of the Son from the Father, we see that the death on the Cross demonstrated that the human and divine know but one and the same law of life and being. Thus it is that the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, has been, and ever will be, regarded by theologians, as well as by the simple believers, as the way of the atonement. Via crucis via salutis."
The scientific theologians tell me when I ask that this parade of the sacrifice of Christ is to recall to men how much they should love Christ. That He so loved them that He gave Himself a victim for their salvation. The crucifix, the incessant preaching of the death of Christ, the sacrament of the Communion, is to cause us to love Him as to do what He taught us. That it does have some such effect no one can doubt—on Latin people. But on others?
To some it seems that if you try to reason at all about it, the emotion awakened might be, nay should be, otherwise. In those not instinct with one emotion the first impression awakened is disgust at the parade of death and blood; the second, horror at the God who could demand such a sacrifice, who could not be pacified but by the execution in circumstances of shame of His own Son. They shrink from it. It is no matter of reason. Do you think one who felt so could be argued out of his horror or a Christian out of his devotion? They are instinctive feelings which nothing will change. And yet in a very small way even the Buddhist has the instinct of sacrifice. For I remember that when the fowls were killed inside the city gate and their blood ran upon the ground the people looked just as these Italian people looked. The emotion was the same in kind, and it was not either love for the fowls or wonder at the demand of the spirits that moved them. And so when the slaves were sacrificed beneath the oaks, was it gratitude to the slaves that was evoked? And in the self-sacrifice at the car of Juggernauth? It may be sometimes that gratitude may be added, but this is not the root emotion. The instinct of sacrifice has its roots much deeper than this, quite apart from this; and, with perhaps only one exception—Buddhism—all religions have practised it. Christianity performs no more sacrifices now, but all its churches, in all their varieties weekly at the great sacrament of the Communion, commemorate—nay, it is claimed in a measure recreate—this sacrifice of the Son to the Father. Sacrifice is of the very root of this religion. It is far older than any creed. The Jews knew of sacrifice two thousand years before the day of Christ, the Celts sacrificed slaves ages before that.
But it may be said these crosses, these crucifixes, are peculiar to Catholic countries. You do not see them in North Germany, in England, in America. Teutonic nations do not parade this sacrifice. No, they do not, for it does not appeal to them so much as to the nations of Southern Europe. Sacrifice was not unknown to the Teutons and the Northern people, but it never reached the height it did further South. It has been the Latin peoples who in this as in other matters went to extremes. It was the Greeks who sacrificed Iphigenia, who had the festival of the Thargalia; it was Rome which produced Curtius and others who sacrificed themselves. It was the Romans who sacrificed thousands in the Coliseum. It is in the tumuli of Celtic peoples where we find the cloven skulls of slaves.
Sacrifice has appealed always more to the Latin then and now; and therefore you see the crucifix in Latin countries, but not with us. Still, we are not free from the emotion. We have the sacrament of Communion; the Atonement appeals to us also. The passions that are strong in the Latin peoples are weak with us, yet they exist. The instincts are the same. When executions were public our people thronged to see them. Death has always a peculiar attraction, quite apart from any idea connected with it. It is such a wonderful thing the taking of life, so awe-inspiring, that it has appealed always to men; especially in the west.
In the East that has accepted Buddhism, especially in Burma, it is much less so. They have, it is true, the usual pleasure and curiosity in seeing blood and death. And occasionally you come across some petty sacrifice like that of the fowls mentioned above; but the instinct is comparatively weak. It has never, even before they were Buddhists, been general, and never extended even to cattle. The sacrifice of a man (remember, I say sacrifice, not execution), would be absolutely abhorrent to them, how much more so that of a God? They have not the instinctive recognition of any beauty in it. Therefore, for this amongst other reasons, the Burmese reject Christianity.
But to the Western instinct this sacrifice and this atonement is wonderful and beautiful. It appeals to us. The old instinct is satisfied.
Therefore, amongst other reasons, Christians cling to the Atonement, and to make that sacrifice the greatest possible it must be the sacrifice of God, and as God can only be sacrificed to God the Christian God must be a multiple one. To postulate as the Mahommedan does, God is God, would destroy the depth of the Atonement. Hence arises the creed, the attempt to reconcile two opposed instincts. There is one God—that is an instinct, arising from our generalising power; there must be at least two Gods to explain the Atonement, and so we have the Father and the Son.
For of the three Godheads only these two are real to most people. There is God the Ruler, the Maker of the world, and there is Christ. These are both very real to all Christians. They are prayed to individually, they are worshipped separately, they are clear conceptions. But is there any clear conception of the Holy Ghost as a distinct personality? Is He ever cited separately from the others? Has He any special characteristics? There are, for instance, many pictures of God, and many more of Christ—are there any of the Holy Ghost? This Third Person of the Trinity appeals to no instinct, and is only an abstraction in popular thought. When the Creed was framed it was necessary to include the Holy Ghost because He is mentioned in the New Testament. He has remained an abstraction only. But the other two Godheads are realities, because they appeal to feelings that are innate. They are the explanation of these feelings.