Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/336

324 suffering of the innocent for the guilty in order to placate the divine anger and render the Deity propitious, or to satisfy the claims of justice so that the Judge can be clement to transgressors of law and permit them, untrammeled by guilt for the past, to reform, or give them another chance to do better. Neither the divine holiness nor justice was ever antagonized to the sinner, and therefore never needed to be conciliated, and certainly neither could ever be reconciled with sin; so that an atonement either to dispose God favorably toward sinners or to tolerate sin, or to make any allowance for sin or to pardon sin, is inconsistent with the divine nature. And nothing can be more absurd than the teaching that God was at enmity with the sinner, unless it be the affirmation of those who believe it, that the atonement is "a provision of divine grace or love"; for, plainly stated, it is this: An atonement or means of reconciliation was necessary because God hated sinners, but was really instituted because "God so loved the world" of sinners. Men feel that God is angry with them and hostile to them, but certainly the atonement of Christ, whatever it be, is counteracting this erroneous sentiment by its disclosure of the infinite and unwavering paternal love of God for man in the life and death of his Son; and any provision of mercy which the divine wisdom and goodness has made for sinners is necessarily predicated on this infinite love of the common Father of the race. And so the New Theology objects to all moral views of the atonement which make provisions for waiving any legal process or infliction of penalty, and holds that no new provision of grace or special scheme of redemption for the recovery of man from the power and dominion of sin was necessary; that all the elements for the restoration from sin to righteousness are included in the provisions of Nature, and are sufficient when quickened and invigorated by the Divine Spirit to reinstate men in holiness and in the favor of God. So that the regeneration of the human soul is as practicable without the mission or work of Christ as an additional agency as with it, for it consists essentially in the deliberate determination henceforth and forever to be at one with God; and from this determinative initiative the optimistic element of the mind brings the peace, courage, and hope of faith. There is nothing now to afflict or discourage except the past, and that is forsaken and abhorred; and since in eternal progress, and effort the soul is in accord with the laws of its being and the Divine Will, it gradually comes to forget, as God does, its back-slidings, and to think only of that which is pleasing to God and which will be the source of perpetual delight.

It would not be consistent with the general run of creation had remedial provisions been left out of the moral nature of man while they are incorporated in animal, in vegetal, and in social being; nor would it be consistent with the infinite forethought or consideration or compassion of our Father in heaven to introduce a new agency essential to human welfare which was not of immediate and universal