It is otherwise when we break through the restraints of the modern individualism, and strive to enter into that literal identification of Christ with Christians which is so frequent with St. Paul. If, instead of saying that Christ had our human nature, we could put our thought into this form,—"He was (and is) our human nature,"—if we could suppose our type of being not merely represented in him as a sample, but concentrated in him as a whole,—we should read its essentials and destination in his biography: his predicates would be its predicates: and in his sorrows and sanctity it might undergo purification. Humanity thus made into a person would then be the corresponding fact to Deity embodied in a person: both would be Incarnations,—essential Manhood and essential Godhead,—co-present in the same manifested life. In the ordinary conception of the doctrine of two natures, Christ is represented, we believe, as a man; in the mode of thought to which we now refer, he appears as Man. The difficulties which arise in the attempt to carry out this form of thinking are evident enough, even to those who know nothing of the Parmenides of Plato. Indeed, they are rendered so obtrusive by our modern habits of mind, that even a momentary seizure, for mere purposes of interpretation, of that older intellectual posture, scarcely remains possible to us. The apprehension of it, however, is indispensable to one who would appreciate the mediatorial theology of Christendom,—a theology which never could have sprung up if our present conceptualist and nominalist notions had always prevailed, and which, ever since their ascendency in Europe, has been driven to deplorable shifts of self-justification. The parallel between the first and second Adam, the fall and the restoration, the death incurred and the life recovered, acquire new meaning for those who thus think,—that as the incidents of Adam's existence become generic by descent, so the incidents of Christ's existence are generic by diffusion; that if in the one we see humanity at head-quarters in time, in the other we see it at head-quarters in comprehension; so that, like an atmosphere which, purified at nucleus, has the taint drawn off from its margin, our nature is freed from its sickliness in him. It becomes intelligible to us in what sense we are to take refuge in him as our including term, to find in him an epitome of our true existence, to die (even to have died) with him, to suffer with him, to be risen with him, to dwell above in him. On the assumption of such a union, his life ceases to be an individual biography; what is manifested in him personally, becomes true of us universally; and it is as if we were all—like special examples in a general rule, or undeveloped truths in a parent principle—virtually present in his dealings with evil and with God. It is evident, that in this view his mediation has no chasm to cross, no foreign region to enter, but is an inseparable predicate of his own personal acts. The facility of conception afforded by this method is betrayed by Mr. Campbell's resort to an analogous hypothesis as a mere illustrative help to the mind. Witness the following striking passage:—
"That we may fully realize what manner of equivalent to the dishonor done to the law and name of God by sin an adequate repentance and sorrow for sin must be, and how far more truly than any penal infliction such repentance and confession must satisfy Divine justice, let us suppose that all the sin of humanity has been committed by one human spirit, on whom is accumulated this immeasurable amount of guilt; and let us suppose this spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pass out of sin into holiness, and to become filled with the light of God, becoming perfectly righteous with God's own righteousness,—such a change, were such a change possible, would imply in the spirit so changed a perfect condemnation of the past of its own existence, and an absolute and perfect repentance, a confession of its sin commensurate with its evil. If the sense of personal identity remained, it must be so. Now, let us contemplate this repentance with reference to the guilt of such a spirit, and the question of pardon for its past sin and admission now to the light of God's favor. Shall this repentance be accepted as an atonement, and, the past sin being thus confessed, shall the Divine favor flow out on that present perfect righteousness which thus condemns the past, or shall that repentance be declared inadequate? Shall the present perfect righteousness be rejected on account of the past sin, so absolutely and perfectly repented of? and shall Divine justice still demand adequate punishment for the past sin, and refuse to the present righteousness adequate acknowledgment,—the favor which, in respect of its own nature, belongs to it? It appears to me impossible to give any but one answer to these questions. We feel that such a repentance as we are supposing would, in such a case, be the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice. Now, with the difference of personal identity, the case I have supposed is the actual case of Christ, the holy one of God, bearing the sins of all men on his spirit,—in Luther's words, 'the one sinner,'—and meeting the cry of these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorbing and exhausting that Divine wrath in that adequate confession and perfect response on the part of man which was possible only to the infinite and eternal righteousness in humanity."—p. 143.
The case which our author here presents as an aid to the imagination was to Luther the literal reality; to whom, accordingly, Christ was "the one sinner," without "the difference of personal identity," which is here so innocently slipped in, as if it were of no consequence. Christ, in the Reformer's view, was humanity, our humanity; and the grand function and triumph of faith is to feel ourselves included in him, to merge our individuality, sins and all, in his comprehending manhood and atoning obedience. Hence the stress which Luther lays on "the well-applying the pronoun" our, in the phrase, "who gave himself for our sins"; "that this one syllable being believed may swallow up all thy sins." The effect of this realism on the theology of Luther has not been sufficiently remarked. We believe it to be the key to much that is obscure in his writings, and the secret source of his antipathy to the Calvinistic type of the Reformation. Absorption of Manhood into Christ,—distribution of Godhead into humanity,—these were the correlative parts of his objective belief,—Atonement and Eucharistic Real Presence: and neither in themselves nor in their correspondence can they be appreciated, without standing with him at the point of view which we have endeavored to indicate.
Whether mediatorial religion shall continue to include in its scheme some provision for dealing with God on behalf of men, will mainly depend on the successful revival or the final abandonment of the old realistic modes of thought. Mr. Campbell's compromise with them, taking refuge with them for illustration while disowning them in substance, answers no logical or theological purpose at all. If he follows out the natural tendencies and affinities of his faith, he must rest exclusively at last in the other half of the doctrine, which exhibits the dealing with man on behalf of God. In this best sense mediatorial religion is imperishable, and imperishably identified with Christianity. The Son of God, at once above our life and in our life, morally divine and circumstantially human, mediates for us between the self so hard to escape, and the Infinite so hopeless to reach; and draws us out of our mournful darkness without losing us in excess of light. He opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries of our existence, appealing to a consciousness in us that was asleep before. And though he leaves whole worlds of thought approachable only by silent wonder, yet his own walk of heavenly communion, his words of grace and works of power, his strife of divine sorrow, his cross of self-sacrifice, his reappearance behind the veil of life eternal, fix on him such holy trust and love, that, where we are denied the assurance of knowledge, we attain the repose of faith.
[FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.]
It is at all times difficult, even for the wisest, to describe aright the tendencies of the age in which they live, and lay down its bearings on the great chart of human affairs. Our own sensations can give us no notice whither we are going; and the infinite life-stream on which we ride, restless as it is with the surface-waves of innumerable events, reports nothing of the mighty current that sweeps us on, except by faint and silent intimations legible only to the skilled interpreter of heaven. It is something, however, to have the feeling that we are moving, and to be awake and looking out; and perhaps there never was a period in which this consciousness was more diffused throughout society than in our own. No one can look up and around at the religious and social phenomena of Christendom, without the persuasion that we are entering a new hemisphere of the world's history,—a persuasion corroborated even by those who disclaim it, and who insist on still steering by lights of tradition now sinking into the mists of the receding horizon. Wherever we turn our eye, we discover some symptom of an impending revolution in the forms of Christian faith. The gross materialism and absolute unbelief diffused for the first time among vast masses of our population; the fast-spreading (and, as it appears to us, morbid) dislike to look steadily at anything miraculous; the extensive renunciation, even among the religious classes on the Continent, of historical Christianity; the schisms and ever-new peculiarities which are weakening all sects, and, like seedlings of the Reformation, are obscuring the species, by multiplying the varieties, of opinion; the revived controversies, penetrating all the great political questions of the age, between the ecclesiastical and civil powers,—are not the only indications of approaching theological change. That very conservatism and recoil upon the high doctrine of an elder time, which is manifest in every section of the Christian world, is a confession by contrast of the same thing. For opinion does not turn round and retreat into the past, till it has lost its natural shelter in the present, and dreads some merciless storm in the future. The outward strength which the older churches of our country seem to be acquiring arises from the rallying of alarm and the herding together of trembling sympathies; and though fear may unite men against external assaults upon institutions, it cannot stop the decay of inward doubt. It would seem as if Christianity was threatened by the mental activity which it has itself created; as if the intellectual weapons which have been forged and tempered by its skill were treacherously turned against its life. It is vain, however, to strike a power that is immortal; nothing will fall but the bodily form cast for a season around the imperishable spirit.
Protestantism, with all its blessings, has after all greatly disfigured Christianity, by constructing it into a rigid metaphysical form, and setting it up on a narrow pedestal of antiquarian proof;—by destroying its infinite character through definitions, and developing it dogmatically rather than spiritually;—by treating it, not as an ideal glory around the life of man, but a logical incision into the psychology of God. The wreck of systems framed under this false conception will but leave the pure spirit of our religion in the enjoyment of a more sacred homage;—you may dash the image, but you cannot touch the god.
In the following remarks we shall seek to make this evident;—to show what principles of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular, may be pronounced safe from the shocks of doubt. In times of consternation and uncertainty, it behooves each one to look within him for the heart of courage, and around him for the place of shelter, and to single out, amid countless points of danger, some refuge immutable and eternal. With this view, we propose to trace an outline of Christian truths which we consider secure and durable as our very nature;—a chain of granite points rising, like the rock of ages, above the shifting seas of human opinion. In doing so, we shall be simply delineating Unitarian Christianity, according to our conception of it;—expounding it, not as a barren negation, but as a scheme of positive religion; exhibiting both its characteristic faiths, and something of the modes of thought by which they are reached.