A Goodly Heritage

If we would investigate the very doctrine of Atonement which God's Word sets forth, — avoiding arbitrary and capricious speculations, and illegitimate and useless trains of thought, — it must be laid down at the outset, as a proposition of transcendent importance, — That the Doctrine of the Atonement ought to be discussed and defended as inside the Doctrine of the Covenant of Grace. I. It will not be denied nor doubted that the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace is a larger category than the doctrine of the Atonement. It is wider; comprehending the Atonement within its provisions; affording to it also both explanation and support. Now it surely is extremely injudicious and impolitic for defenders of the faith to discuss any scriptural doctrine, and particularly to profess to do so fully and exhaustively, outside of any greater category to which the doctrine properly and natively belongs. For by doing so they place it in a position of unnecessary danger, and assign to themsel...

Genuine admiration of the cross of Christ - imbuing a man with the evangelical spirituality which is the lack of the age, and which alone has been found powerful enough to alienate us from the world at every point - makes him, there can be no reason to doubt, what the psalmist calls himself, "a stranger on the earth" (Ps. 119:19). Living by that faith which does not, and from the nature of things cannot, in this life "receive the promises, but sees them afar off, and is persuaded of them and embraces them," and realizes the splendidly dominating power of them, the man wakens up to the clear consciousness, and sees no reason for withholding the confession: "I am a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth" (Heb. 11:13); "a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were" (Ps. 39:12).  It is of some importance to vindicate this aspect of the Christian life from those objections which intelligent and average healthy-minded men of the world are not unnatu...

The fundamental notion and essence of atonement, as embodied in the priestly work of Christ, is the offering of Himself unto God [as] a sacrifice and a reconciliation for the sins of His people. It is His substitutionary oblation of Himself, bearing the curse and bringing in righteousness, thereby satisfying Divine justice and reconciling us unto God…But now: Is the action of Priesthood real action—not mere suffering or endurance, but real action, and that action, offering? Then, without bringing out the nature of this action more fully—without even asking what the exact and intrinsic nature of this action is—we may see that it bears very powerfully, though perhaps not so patently, upon all the false theories [of atonement]…Their advocates contemplate Christ’s death not as action, but exclusively as suffering: it is a providential event to which Christ is subjected, not a priestly action that Christ achieves. They recognize His passive endurance, not His priestly agency. They see t...

Genuine admiration of the cross of Christ - imbuing a man with the evangelical spirituality which is the lack of the age, and which alone has been found powerful enough to alienate us from the world at every point - makes him, there can be no reason to doubt, what the psalmist calls himself, "a stranger on the earth" (Ps. 119:19). Living by that faith which does not, and from the nature of things cannot, in this life "receive the promises, but sees them afar off, and is persuaded of them and embraces them," and realizes the splendidly dominating power of them, the man wakens up to the clear consciousness, and sees no reason for withholding the confession: "I am a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth" (Heb. 11:13); "a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were" (Ps. 39:12). It is of some importance to vindicate this aspect of the Christian life from those objections which intelligent and average...