DR. WALDENSTROM AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

II.-Concluded.

No one of those whose doctrine Dr. Waldenstrom is opposing would think of denying that Christ's blood cleanses from all sin. If they were bold enough or ignorant enough to do so, it would certainly be easy work, with but a single text such as he quotes, to refute them. As it is, his first arguments, when he comes to the New Testament, are but another instance of the strange half-sightedness which so constantly afflicts him. Why should it result that because the blood of the Lamb cleanses, it cannot atone? or that cleansing and atoning should be but the same thing ? Surely it cleanses, purifies, sanctifies (we affirm it with all our hearts), and yet it atones ! And more:its power to atone is just what gives it power to cleanse, as we shall see.

Even as to cleansing, the washing of water and the sprinkling of blood have to be distinguished as he does not distinguish them; and likewise the sprinkling of blood upon the person from the sprinkling of blood upon the altar or upon the mercy-seat. All this he entirely confounds ; and to disentangle the confusion is enough completely to destroy his system.

He begins with what is indeed an important text- Heb. 2:17, 18, where the common version gives, "to make reconciliation for." The Revised has, rightly, " make propitiation." He says, Christ's "work as High-Priest was to make propitiation for the sins of the people." The apostle does not say, "to propitiate God," but "to make propitiation for the sins of the people.'' Dr. Waldenstrom turns back to the Old-Testament sacrifices to explain this in the manner already familiar to us, adding, "As John says, 'The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. (i Jno. 1:7.)' But to cleanse is to cleanse, or purify, and nothing else. . . . and when once all His work shall have been consummated, then there shall stand around His throne a great multitude which no man can number-a multitude of human beings, pure and holy like Himself. And were you to ask how they have become so pure, they would answer that they ' washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb! (Rev. 7:14.) Mark, mark, not that they by the blood of Jesus have appeased God; no, but that they, in the blood of Jesus, have washed their robes."

The style of argument I have already indicated:"The apostle does not say, 'to propitiate God' "! Not, it must be confessed, in so many words; but does he say, to make propitiation ? It is the only possible rendering of the text. whom, then, does He propitiate, if not God ? How did He make propitiation at all-that is, appeasal, -if there were no one to be appeased ? If there were, who was it but God ? Surely, if He is not named, the reference is, plainly enough, to Him.

Mr. Princell, as we have seen, is bolder than his leader. Hilaskomai here "plainly" means only "to show mercy with respect to"-that is, "to pardon '! But this is only assertion, against which we have the whole doctrine of the Old Testament, as we have seen, as well as the regular use of the word. In Luke 18:13 the correct force of the passive is also " be propitiated." The sacrificial system shows any thing rather than simple " forgiveness " without atonement made, and the sinner's repentance was not the atonement.

Then the quotation from John can scarcely, one would think, be meant for proof. Of course, to cleanse is to cleanse, but " to make propitiation " is not "to cleanse.' The latter is the effect of the former-not the same thing. And even to cleanse here is not to make inwardly pure, in the sense of regeneration, or communicating a new life, but answers to Heb. 10:22-the" heart sprinkled from an evil conscience." The meaning of purging by the blood Hebrews will presently show us.

As for the blood-washed throng in Revelation, they are witnesses against Dr. Waldenstrom, not for him. For the white robes are (διχαιώματα) " the righteous acts of the saints" (Rev. 19:8, R. V.), which cannot be meant, therefore, to have been internally purified, but freed from the imputation of the evil which had been in them after all; the washing here was from guilt, and it is by its atoning power that the blood of Christ avails for this.

But the doctrine of cleansing by the blood is in the ninth and tenth chapters of Hebrews, to which Dr. Waldenstrom now goes on, having quoted chap. 9:13, 14, he asks, " What, then, according to the idea of the apostle, were the sacrifices of goats and oxen meant to do ? Answer:To appease God ? No; but to sanctify the unclean unto an outward cleansing. To effect any spiritual cleansing, or to make the worshipers perfect as touching the conscience, that they could not do. (5:9.) ' For the law made nothing perfect.' (chap. 7:19.) But the sacrifices of the Old Testament were only types. In the New Testament, there is a better sacrificial blood-the blood of Jesus Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit has offered Himself unto God ; and what was its significance according to the idea of the apostle ? Did he say, " How much more, then, shall the blood of Christ appease God, so that, again, it may be possible for Him to be gracious unto us?' No; but he did say this:' How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.' . . . To cleanse, to cleanse from sin, that is the power of the sacrificial blood in the New Testament."

Now, what is the theme of the apostle in all this part of Hebrews ? It is the cleansing of the conscience, so that we can now do what under the law they could not-draw nigh to God. The vail before the holiest showed that under the law,-that is, by its works,-this was impossible. The vail is now rent, and Christ has, by His own blood, entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. What does this mean, entering in as high-priest by His own blood ? Does it mean power in the blood Godward, or simply manward ? How has He obtained redemption ? Does the blood speak of death here, or of life ? Now, immediately following the verse which Dr. Waldenstrom has quoted we find this:"And for this cause He is the mediator of the new testament, that, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."

Why has not Dr. Waldenstrom quoted this ? Would it have helped his argument, or spoiled it, to have done so ? And the apostle goes on to insist upon the necessity of death, and to connect with it what was, indeed, the testimony of it-the blood so necessary even under the law, and without shedding of which was no remission? We see that this shedding of blood does not stand alone in this chapter; but that it is connected with the doctrine clearly announced, of the necessity of the death of Christ for redemption, and that the shedding of blood must (of course) furnish the blood which now sprinkled upon the heart purges it from a bad conscience. The knowledge of redemption through Christ's death sets the soul at rest, and enables us to draw near to God.

But more :by the same precious blood the heavenly things themselves are cleansed for us,-"that is," says Dr. Waldenstrom himself, "the heavenly sanctuary." He catches at this to say that whatever may be meant by it, " yet surely we must see that [the apostle] sets forth the meaning of the sacrifices to be that of cleansing." If he had said 'a' meaning, who would have contested it ? But he thinks he has gained all when he states thus a half-truth for a whole. Nay, it is no matter to him what the heavenly sanctuary means; nor, therefore, what the cleansing itself is, for that must be affected by it. His view imperatively requires, as we have seen, that it should be internal cleansing,-the communication of life, for the blood is the life; but how can the heavenly sanctuary be cleansed thus? It cannot, and cleansing from defilement has no real place in Dr. Waldenstrom's thoughts.

Yet he can venture to tell us that the apostle " explains this cleansing as meaning that Christ once for all, now at the end of the ages, has been manifested ' to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (5:26);' " and that " in verse 28, he repeats the same thought, saying, ' Christ was once offered to bear [that is, for the purpose of bearing, or taking away] the sins of many.'Thus, what in other places is called atonement for sins through sacrifices, that is here called a putting away of sins, or a bearing them away"!

This is bold enough :the two words are quite different, the " putting away " of sins the effect of atonement, the bearing of sins, the essential element of atonement itself. The last is the same word that Peter uses when he says, in a text which seems, like some other important ones, to have escaped our author. " Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree … by whose stripes ye were healed." (i Pet. 2:24.) Is this the same as 'bare away our sins in His own body " and that " on the tree "? Even if it were, awkward as would be the conception, it could scarcely obscure the vicarious character of atonement here ; but it is not, as Dr. Waldenstrom must know it is not:it is "bare up," "sustained," bore the burden of. How nearly the repetition of Isaiah's words:" He shall bear their iniquities; . . . He hath poured out His soul unto death ; and He was numbered with the transgressors ; and He bare the sin of many " !

Thus alone could sin be taken away, " the chastisement of our peace " being " upon Him." How vain to deny it ! how terrible to slight or deny the need and value of a work so precious ! It is needless to follow Dr. Waldenstrom into the tenth chapter of Hebrews, where his argument is but a monotonous repetition of the same half-truths. The sacrifice cleanses, therefore it does not atone ! it sanctifies, therefore it does not atone ! What is supposed to be a part of our intuitive knowledge he does not seem to have apprehended, that a whole is greater than its parts. Let us repeat it for him, that it is just because the blood df Christ atones for us that it can cleanse,-that it is just because He bare our sins upon the tree that they can be taken away from us. The truth he refuses is the natural, necessary complement of the truth he sees.

Nor does it need to take up the passages cited from the first epistle of John, which even all his effort cannot make otherwise than clear. It is only when he introduces such thoughts as that of " propitiating sinners from their sins "-to which he rightly enough appends the doubt, " if we could use such an expression "-that there is any difficulty at all. He does not, as we have seen, even mention the passages in Peter. His arguments, with the most wearisome reiteration, do but affirm and reaffirm these two things, that because the blood is the life, blood poured out, or sprinkled is still life, not death ; and secondly, that once prove that the blood sanctifies or cleanses, you have disproved vicarious atonement. Meanwhile, he has scarcely attempted to meet the arguments on the other side, or looked even at the texts upon which they are founded ! And while he admits, in a general way, that Christ died for us-I suppose, for our sins,-yet why He should have died, we cannot, in the two books we have been examining at least, understand at all. It may be that it was for the moral effect of it:Scripture says it was " for redemption." That "the chastisement of our peace was upon Him;" that ''the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" that thus "He was made sin for us," "bare the sins of many," "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," "suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust," "redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us;" that He "tasted death for every man;" that "the Son of man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,"-all this, and much more, must be for him as inexplicable as, in fact, by him it is unexplained.

We do not propose to follow him into the last three chapters of this book, where, from the common confusion between reconciliation and atonement, he gains some points against those who make it. In this there is little interest for us, and in much that he says we should have to agree with him; but it is striking and characteristic that, when he has shown us how, in those who are ambassadors for Christ, God beseeches men, as it were, and they pray, in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God,- there, as if a mountain lay across his path, he stops and goes no further. From his book you would never learn that the ground of the appeal for reconciliation lies in this, that "God has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

And this mountain, though with the eternal dawn bright upon its summit, lies still as an insurmountable barrier across the path of Dr. Waldenstrom and all those who plead the cause of non-vicarious atonement.