Atonement in literature and life

Front matter

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Preface

In adding a volume to the ever increasing flood of books issued from the press of to-day, it becomes a writer to state his reasons for challenging the attention of a surfeited and much-enduring public. Especially is this true when the subject is so apparently outworn and rejected as the atonement. For this theme, once so commanding and of conceded importance, has been quite generally neglected, even by religious people, and fails to arouse more than a languid interest. The venerated interpretations now seem antiquated, and the dogma itself is in many pulpits discredited. But a doctrine which has entered so vitally into spiritual thought and experience, and which every age has explained in its own language and according to its prevailing philosophy, must contain a residuum of truth which will ever abide and reclothe itself in a fashion suited to each generation.

The word " atonement," as I shall use it, is employed to explain the method by which reconciliviii PREFACE

ation with God, with life, and with one's past is achieved. My purpose is not to elaborate a dogma. This would be a thankless task. " It is not summation of doctrine that we want," says Bushnell, " we have enough of that. What we want a great deal more is something to give us greater breadth of standing and greater vitality of idea." In attempting to satisfy this need I have sought to take the gospel of reconciliation out of the stiff forms of theology and to find its essential truths as they appear in life, and life as the best minds have seen it. As this theme holds as prominent a place in literature as in religion, it has seemed to me that atonement might profitably be studied in the pages of the great seers who have been recognized by the generations as portraying most truthfully the guilt, the woe, the peace of the heart. I have no knowledge that any one has preceded me in thus approaching one of Christianity's supreme verities. This journey over an untried way has brought to view two aspects of reconciliation which are clearly revealed in literature, but which have been either sadly neglected by theology, or not given their proper place in our systems of religious thought. One becomes convinced, as he walks with those master minds who " saw life steadily and saw it whole,"

PREFACE ix

that the legend of Lethe with its magical waters has a deep spiritual value ; and that a trust in " some soul of goodness in things evil " exercises a most important part in reconciliation. In the second section of this volume these two truths have been interpreted in their religious significance, and have been given the prominent position which belongs to them in a doctrine of reconciliation. Whatever worth there may be in these truth s, and the intrinsic interest of the method pursued, constitute the writer's claim to a patient reading. I have also endeavored to indicate the distinction between the work of the historical Jesus and the Eternal Christ, although the difficulties of drawing the line of demarcation are obvious. Some confusion would have been avoided by using the phrase " indwelling God " rather than the designation "Eternal Christ." But both the Scriptures and Christian experience apply the name " Christ " to the immanent Spirit, and I have felt at liberty to follow their example in order to enforce the truth of the eternal atonement wrought by the Son of God.

To have developed the thoughts contained in this volume into a treatise, by refining definitions, by refuting critics, and by formulating a closely articulated dogma, would have been contrary to x PREFACE

my inclinations and beyond my ability. It would also have narrowed the circle of readers to a select company of theological experts, and have made the book unattractive to that ever increasing number of readers who are interested in the deep things of the spirit, but care little for the technical language of religious science. I have therefore chosen the simpler method of sketching in broad outline truths which seem to me of superlative importance.

The following pages may be criticised for being too repetitious in statement. The fault, if it be such, arises partly from the large number of witnesses called, and partly from my desire to strongly emphasize one or two elemental truths. I have preferred to err on the side of repeated statement, rather than to fail of making the meaning perfectly clear.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Edward Y. Hincks, D. D., for pertinent criticisms which have led me to express with greater accuracy and fullness the subject matter under consideration, and to the Rev. Joseph Anderson, D. D., and the Rev. Charles H. Oliphant for giving me the benefit of their trained literary tastes and their fine sense of the fitness of words and phrases in the revision of the book. These

PREFACE xi

friends have put their disciplined judgments so freely at my disposal that I must take upon myself the responsibility for what is unfinished in form or erroneous in doctrine.

Charles Allen Dinsmore.

CONTENTS PART I

CHAPTER I Dominant Ideas in Literature and Religion

Sin, retribution, and reconciliation are the controlling ideas of both religion and literature. No religion can permanently win the assent of men which does not have a clear and sane teaching regarding the reconciliation of God and man. This reconciliation is to be studied through poets rather than through theologians. Such a method offers a new point of view, and promotes clarity of thought. As reconciliation takes place between persons, it may well be studied from life. Dante chose poets for his guides. Literature is life at its best expression. An objection answered and a limitation stated. Divine and human forgiveness analogous 3

Chapter II

Inattention to definition causes confusion. Reconciliation and atonement defined. Relation of the incarnation to the atonement. Phillips Brooks quoted. A fact like the atonement inseparable from theory. A doctrine of the atonement necessary . 19

CHAPTER HI

The theme of the Iliad is sin, retribution, reconciliation. Quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. Reconciled by a xiv CONTENTS

realization of the consequences, by repentance, by public confession, and an endeavor to make amends. Reconciliation between deity and the offender. Sin not conceived in its Christian meaning. Defilement of sin. Honor paid to the divine majesty 29

Chapter IV

iEsCHYLUS

The Greek theatre at its best was the pulpit of the day. Plot of the " Oresteia." iEschylus' conception of God. The law of heredity. The retributive justice of God in history. Curse is stayed when it falls upon Orestes, a righteous man. The Furies honored. Hereditary evil checked by the moral will of a good man. The vicarious sufferer in " Prometheus Bound " . .39

Chapter V

The Shakespeare of the ancient stage. Story of " CEdipus." The inexorable divine order. What will satisfy the divine justice ? Suffering endured submissively until the heart is purified and the will subdued. (Edipus is partially reconciled because evil has worked good 59

Chapter VI

Latin literature omitted because conspicuously lacking in ethical and spiritual originality. The "Divina Commedia " outlined. Sin personified in Lucifer. Dante centres his theology in the love of God. Christ's death satisfies the divine justice, and remits the eternal penalties of sin for all who accept it by baptism. Man's part is performed by confession, contrition, and satisfactory deeds which expiate and purify. A Lethe for the memory. Dante is reconciled to life and its disciplines because he sees all things in God 69

CONTENTS xv

Chapter VII

Compared with Dante and Sophocles. The moral framework of the world powerfully disclosed. Macbeth. Richard III. Place of death in tragedy. Shakespeare could not permanently be satisfied with the conception of life portrayed in the tragedies. Reconciliation in " The Winter's Tale." " The Tempest " expresses Shakespeare's reconciliation with life. There is a Good Will working in all and over all. Goodness victorious over calamities. Queen Katharine. Cardinal Wolsey. Peace for the memory 89

CHAPTER Yin

Differs from Dante and Shakespeare in his treatment of sin. Emphasizes its lawlessness. Gives prominence to a neglected truth. The mind is at peace only when the results of evil are intrusted to an all-sufficient grace. Adam's agony. Michael's revelation of Christ's victory. " Paradise Regained " is based on the victory of Christ, and not on his sufferings . . . 107

CHAPTER IX George Eliot

Only special phases of reconciliation hereafter to be considered. Reconciliation in " Adam Bede." The story. An incomplete and shadowed reconciliation. Contrition, confession, and partial satisfaction. Propitiation, but unalterable loss. Differs from Milton and Tennyson 119

Chapter X

"The Scarlet Letter." Resemblance to Dante's "Purgatorio." Need of confession in reconciliation. Propitiation of just indignation. A greater measure of reconciliation in " The Scarlet Letter " than in " Adam Bede." 125 xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER XI Hosea and Tennyson

Story of Gomer's desertion. Hosea's unfailing affection. Principles of reconciliation: suffering love, repentance in view of consequences, maintenance of moral distinctions by expiatory sufferings, propitiation of holy indignation. " Idylls of the King." Arthur's holy love is checked in its passion for reconciliation by an instinctive revulsion from evil, which cannot be ignored, but must be allayed 135

CHAPTER XII Job, The Suffering Servant, Psalm xvh, Stmonds, Whitman, and Whittier

Job's problem is to be reconciled to the providential ordering of his life. The plot of the story. The realization of God's presence and goodness is sufficient for reconciliation. An insight into results compensates the Servant for his sufferings. The beatific vision reconciles the Psalmist to life's losses. Symonds' spiritual doubts. Comte's advice. His religion of " cosmic enthusiasm." Whitman found his reconciliation with life in the faith "that a kelson of the creation is love." Whittiers' trust in an Eternal Goodness 143

PART II CHAPTER I a. Sin, retribution, forgiveness. Different characterizations of sin : its defilement, devastation, moral blindness, lawlessness. Certainty of retribution. Conscience aroused by the knowledge of the results of sin, not by the revelation of love. Conditions to be met in reconciliation: repentance, confession, satisfaction. Sanctity of moral obligations must suffer no diminution in forgiveness 155

b. Reconciliation — a larger question than forgiveness. Mem-

CONTENTS xvii

ory needs a Lethe. The triumph of goodness, either realized or believed in by faith, is the ground of reconciliation . . . 164

CHAPTER II

Over against every prominent expounder of the atonement is a poet or novelist who caught the same vision and proclaimed the same essential truth. iEschylus and Anselm. Aquinas and Dante. Duns Scotus and Sophocles. Grotius and the Greek dramatists. McLeod Campbell and Hawthorne. Bushnell, Hugo, Shakespeare. Propitiation emphasized by Hosea, George Eliot, Tennyson. The ever-recurring idea that forgiveness must be righteous. Reconciliation with life the aspect of the atonement most interesting to the modern mind. Attained through a belief in Goodness in all and over all 173

CHAPTER III

What did Jesus of Nazareth do for the Forgiveness

of our Sins ?

Recapitulation. A well-attested fact that Jesus does save men from their sins. He arouses and deepens men's consciousness of God's moral character. He quickens and intensifies men's sense of sin by his words, actions, and consciousness. By entering into the consciousness of Jesus man realizes both the nature of sin and the holiness and love of God. Coming into the circle of the influence of Jesus, man grows into oneness with God. The cross is the focus of all the truths and forces disclosed in the life of Jesus 191

CHAPTER IV

What does the Eternal Christ do for our Reconciliation ?

What forgiveness cannot do. Omission of modern writers to study the atonement in the light of man's relationship to his xviii CONTENTS

fellows. The brother of the prodigal son. Jacob and his sons. The horror of sin is its contagion. Atonement for the memory. There can be no reconciliation with one's past without either a knowledge of how the effects of sin subserve a good purpose, or a faith that God will make human wrath to praise him. Karma. There can be no reconciliation with life without the recognition of the presence of goodness overcoming evil. Dante, Job, Milton, Whittier, Brooks. There can be no reconciliation on the part of the offended unless evil works a compensating good. God's reconciliation based on the accomplishment of his purpose. The Eternal Christ is Christianity's solution of cosmic evil. The early tendency to regard Jesus as incarnating the humanity of God. The Trinity. The perpetual sacrifice and suffering of Christ. It is a process toward victory. Promises of Christ's ultimate triumph. All things are to be put under his feet. Sin will be so dealt with that every living creature will be satisfied. This an essential part of the atonement. That God must be satisfied is the note of every great theory of the atonement. He is satisfied by the glorious accomplishment of his purposes in creation and redemption. Christ's victory is the Lethe for the memory. The indwelling Christ is literally taking our sins upon himself. His triumph is as essential a part of the atonement as his sufferings. That a Power not ourselves is working for righteousness is an observable fact. Gives a motive for action. Nature of evil. Summary 213

Part I The Dominant Ideas In Literature And Religion

Poet and prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous ; Votes means both prophet and poet : and indeed at all times, prophet and poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally they are the same ; in this most important respect especially, that they have penetrated, both of them, into the sacred mystery of the universe. . . . This divine mystery is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked ; . . . but now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the Vates, whether prophet or poet, has penetrated into it ; is a man, sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. While others forget it, he knows it ; — I might say, he has been driven to know it ; without consent asked of hi?n, he finds himself living in it. Once more, here is no hearsay, but a direct insight and belief ; this man, too, could not help being a sincere man ! Whoever may live in the show of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the fact of things. — Thomas Carlyle.

If there were no witness in the world's deeper literature to the fact of an Atonement, the Atonement would be useless, since the formula expressing it would be unintelligible. — W. Robertson Nicoll.

Chapter I Dominant Ideas In Literature And Religion

The central theme of the Bible is Sin, Retribution, and Reconciliation. It is stated immediately in the first chapters of Genesis, which describe the fall of man, announce the fearful consequences of his transgression, and promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. Sin, Retribution, Reconciliation, — these three words give interest to every story in the Scriptures, interpret every psalm, form the burden of every prophecy, and explain the progressive development of God's purpose in the history of Israel and in the person of Christ.

But these great words are not the exclusive property of the Bible. They lie at the heart of all religions. Under all discrepancies of creed, every faith bears this testimony : that there is in man an uneasiness growing out of the sense of something wrong within him, and that he is to be saved from this wrongness by making proper connections with the higher powers. Along with the wrong part, man is aware of a better part within him, even though this be but a helpless germ. In seeking deliverance from the wrong " he becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a More of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck." *

All religions agree that the " More " exists and acts. They differ chiefly in their interpretation of what this " More" is and how it operates. But Sin, Retribution, Reconciliation are the foundation stones upon which every faith builds its worship and its creed.

These three words are also the strands of the crimson thread running through all the world's great literature. They constitute the plot of the human drama as it has unfolded itself before the eyes of the supreme poets and novelists. They form the theme which has engrossed the thoughts of the immortals in the world of letters, from Homer to George Eliot. No other subjects are broad enough to embrace all humanity, or deep enough to defy exhaustion, or commanding enough to absorb the attention of the incomparable minds of the race.

1 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 508.

Assuming the awful fact of sin, laying tremendous emphasis on the certainty of retribution, the ever-recurrent and developing thought of the Bible is reconciliation. It is promised in the Garden of Eden ; it explains the election of a unique people, its achievement is the glory of Christ, and the power of the New Testament message. The gospel is "that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Christianity does not differ from other religions in its fundamental problems, but in its more consistent and satisfying method of bringing men into harmony with God. No religion can permanently win the assent of the reason and captivate the hearts of men without having a clear, well-digested, and sane teaching of the method by which God and man are reconciled.

Theology's usual and appropriate approach to this great doctrine of the at-one-ment of humanity with Deity has been along the lines of Scripture. All the rites and ceremonies of the Hebrew faith have been searched diligently to find adumbrations of the meaning of the cross. Every text has been scanned for some hint to a solution of the great problem. Each word, sentence, metaphor, sacrifice, and institution has been placed upon the rack and tortured again and again in the hope that it would give up some unuttered secret. But biblical texts have been made to teach so many divergent views that it is no easy task to study them without prepossessions. They have formed the ground of so many fierce theological battles that little wheat is left to be gleaned from the trampled soil.

While disclaiming any thought of casting reproach upon the accepted method of studying our gospel of reconciliation, we shall approach Calvary by a new path. Poets, rather than theologians, will be our guides ; dramatists will take the place of schoolmen. Again we repeat that we do not forsake the ancient way to discredit it. We shall understand prophets, apostles, theologians better when we comprehend how the deepest problems of life have been interpreted by their spiritual kindred, — the supreme seers of literature.

The advantages of this way of approach are obvious. It will offer a new point of view. Old truths become wondrously impressive when seen from an unwonted angle, fresh relationships are discerned, and unsuspected meanings are revealed. An unusual method promotes clearness of thought. Christianity cannot have escaped all distortion in its translation into the terms of Occidental speech. Metaphors which, to one bred in the temper of the East and accustomed to a rich coloring of thought, are replete with spiritual significance, are, to the more prosaic Westerner, crass and misleading. Symbols which once fitted living truths with perfect adjustment are to us but lifeless shells, archseological curiosities, whose purpose we vainly try to comprehend. The approach to the cross through the Jewish sacrificial system, with its altar forms and the " faded metaphors " of theological thought, has grave disadvantages. While it is a true and indispensable way, yet it affords many opportunities for a mind trained in other habits of thought to be led astray. Observations taken from a different point may serve to correct many errors in the ancient survey. Moreover, reconciliation takes place between persons, and may well be studied from life, — life in its richly varied aspects as seen by the most penetrating observers. We cannot understand anything when it is in isolation. Arms from a man, legs from a horse, lungs from a squirrel, skin from an elephant, a spinal column from a giraffe, made into a creature, would form an animal hideous beyond thought. Yet this has been the method of many theologians who have written upon the atonement. They have taken a verse of Oriental poetry, a metaphor from a prophetic writer, a link from one of Paul's arguments, a ceremonial from Hebrew ritual, and have attempted to fit them together into a living truth. The results have not always been edifying. Literature, on the other hand, is an interpreter of life. It is permanent only as it is true to the basal facts and sentiments of humanity. A genuinely great writer does not even control his own characters after he has created them. Having once been born, they become living beings, acting according to the inner laws of their natures. "I had more fun with Sam Weller," Dickens once said to a friend, " than any of my readers ever had. I did not know what Sam was going to say, but he would talk and I would write, and he said and did so many funny things that I was in constant merriment." This is characteristic of men of genius. They are servants to the forces of nature which work through them. A " daimon " possesses them, a god speaks through them. The evidential value of their teaching is very great, for they are sure witnesses of the elemental laws of life.

The validity of this method of inquiry is apparent. Milton affirms that a good book is the "precious life blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured ; " but a great book is even more : it is the distillation of an epoch, the nectar of a civilization. Homer is the essential spirit of prehistoric Greece, Dante is the " voice of ten silent centuries," Tennyson the interpreter of the struggle of faith with science. When we study the problems of sin and reconciliation in their deathless pages we are getting the testimony of an era, we are learning what has seemed true to many generations. Their affirmations therefore come clothed with august authority. They throw on old truths new light which transfigures them with impressive and unfamiliar glory.

Dante bears eloquent witness to the radiance which literature casts upon the path of life. When he would show the way by which God saves a soul lost in the dark wood of sin, he takes for his first guide Virgil, — symbol of the human reason at its best. One cannot help inquiring why he did not choose Aristotle, for whom he had an almost superstitious reverence, calling him " Master of those who know," and even declaring that " where the divine judgment of Aristotle opens its mantle, it seems to me that we should pass by the judgment of all other men." In setting aside Aristotle and selecting Virgil, Dante undoubtedly recorded his deliberate judgment that the soul finds its safest guide in the poets rather than in the philosophers. It is in poetry that reason moves in its crystalline and loftiest sphere. There it gains the surest insights. More than all others the true poet sees the dread nature of sin and its fearful reprisals. In the " Purgatorio " Dante again shows his reverence for the poets. When he and Virgil, — Eeason, — baffled by the steep ascent of the Holy Mountain, needed some one to guide them, it was first the poet Sordello, and then Statius, who led the travelers' feet into right paths and their minds into hidden truth. To Dante's mind it was apparent that the supreme guides sent by Divine

Grace to reveal the fell results of sin and to show how God uses pain to purge the stains o£ evil, are the poets. In this his judgment accords with that of Aristophanes, who said : " Children have the schoolmasters to teach them, but when men are grown up the poets are their teachers."

Poetry, and indeed all great literature, is an interpretation of life. The permanence and rank of any production is measured by the faithfulness of its representation of life. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare live because they caught the inner spirit of an epoch or a creed and gave it a form of beauty. They were more than artists : they saw life steadily and saw it whole. They were open-eyed, and beheld the essential beneath the superficial, rightly dividing the real from the pretentious. To see deeply, and to express clearly what one sees, is the secret of all literary art. Literature manifests the inner spirit of truth. It is imperishable in proportion as life is truly revealed in it. Whatever is exaggerated, meretricious, false, is a blemish. " When I write anything which I know or suspect to be morbid, I feel as though I had told a lie," records Hawthorne in one of his note-books. The sure instincts of the race have selected here and there a poem, a drama, a story, and have lifted it out of the hurrying stream of oblivion and placed it on the serene heights among the world's treasures because it truly embodies the aspirations, the woes, the joys of life. Literature not only deals with life, but with the same aspect of life that is reflected in the Scriptures. In both we find Sin, defeating humanity, breaking the moral framework of the world; Retribution, long delayed, hidden often, yet sure as the movements of the stars; Reconciliation, obtained at great cost, but bringing peace with self, with the injured, and with God. Out of these three great realities grew what is noblest in art and profoundest in religion, and by studying them in the light of the world's ripest experiences we cannot fail of obtaining valuable spiritual insights. In looking through the eyes of the loftiest seers of the Western world upon the fundamental realities and the problems dealt with in the Scriptures, we shall see more clearly what is the distinctive contribution of Christianity to our knowledge and hope.

One accustomed to an ancient phraseology may object that such an investigation as is here proposed does not sufficiently take into account the distinction between the gropings of human reason and the certainties of a divine revelation, and may claim that our study will result only in showing the inferior conclusions of natural religion. Be it so, yet even natural religion is not a false prophet. But the distinction made is not a valid one. Unaided reason is a mere figment of thought. It does not really exist. God is in all minds. He is "the master light of all our seeing." The human reason is not hermetically sealed in a narrow inclosure. There are no fixed bounds where the natural leaves off and the supernatural begins. Choice spirits in all ages, who have been dedicated to righteousness, sensitive to truth, surrendered to the spirit, have caught sight of the gleaming framework of the world, and have been granted clear glimpses of God's way and will in human affairs. A contemplation of such insights cannot be without value.

The method of investigation we have proposed has one limitation which must be clearly recognized, if we are rightly to understand our subject. While we are perfectly correct in affirming that religion is right relationship to God and our fellows, and that personal relations with God are entered into and maintained in much the same way that they are formed and continued with other persons, and while it is indisputable that human ties afford us our surest intelligence and best analogies of divine relationships ; yet there is something lying beyond all human experiences which, though incomprehensible, is supreme in its power of subduing the hearts of men. However rational we may make any doctrine of Christianity by explaining its conformity to the known laws of life, the hiding of its strength is not to be found where our explanation is most lucid, but in that twilight land where faith worships and into which the intellect cannot come with its tests and searchlights. The known is the safest and only interpreter of the unknown; but the dogmatist who imagines that all the mysteries and energies of religion lie inclosed within the little circle of his knowledge, and never lifts his eyes to the encompassing Light, whose glories, more mysterious than the darkness, must be to him forever inscrutable, has not learned where power dwelleth.

A simple illustration may best make intelligible and convincing the thought we would present. Should a chemist analyze a cupful of water dipped from the ocean, he would have definite knowledge of the constituent elements composing the sea. The same formula which would represent the contents of the cup would correctly explain the physical properties of the ocean. Yet has our chemist sufficiently comprehended the ocean when he has examined minutely the contents of his cup of water? Let him lift up his eyes and behold the sea stretching to the horizon ! Let him exalt his imagination, and conceive the many waters

" Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark heaving; "

the ocean will then become to him

" The image of Eternity — the throne Of the Invisible,"

and there will steal into his soul a sense of vastness and majesty of which he found no suggestion in the cup. The sublimity, the feeling of immensity which gives the ocean its chief spiritual significance, makes no deposit in the small quantity of water the chemist analyzed.