THE ATONEMENT
By
REV. JOHN MORGAN, D.D.
The Story of Sin Consciousness, observation, and Scripture unite
in the recognition of the awful actual sinfulness of man. The picture
which Scripture gives of man's moral character, aside from the influence
of grace, is truly frightful. The moral depravity ascribed to him is
total, "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart evil continually."
He is free from righteousness, and no good thing dwells in him. A large
part of the Bible is occupied with the history of the wickedness of
mankind, very different from the history of the prevalence of small-pox or
cholera. We have the wickedness of the antediluvians set forth in terms of
awful significance. Then comes the wickedness of the Canaanites of
Abraham's time, culminating in that of the inhabitants of the cities
associated with Sodom, horribly infecting even the family Lot. Then
follows the wickedness of the later Canaanites, heaping up its measure
till it was full. The wickedness the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites,
and, indeed, of all the nations and races with which the family of Abraham
had to do, moves before us. Neither Abraham nor Isaac thought that their
children could safely intermarry, with them. The Abrahamic race itself
presents a mournful spectacle of depravity, deceit, violence, murder, even
fratricide, breaking out among them. And what a melancholy picture does
the history of Israel exhibit in the different eras of their existence--in
Egypt, in the wilderness, under the judges, under the kings, in their own
land, and in the land of captivity! Finally, when the return from Babylon
promised better things, how soon and how long did odious exhibitions of
sin show themselves--a formalism and hypocrisy more odious than the old
idolatry! The culmination of sin was reached in the rejection,
persecution, and murder of the Son of God, and in the persistent
resistance to his claims to the present day. All this was perpetrated
under a supernatural system of appliances which ought to have made Israel
a nation of exemplary saints--a glorious, transforming spectacle to all
the other nations. When we turn to the great Gentile nations and
empires, we find them of such a character that they are fitly symbolized
to the student of history under the figures of the most ferocious wild
beasts, which succeed each other with no moral improvement; the last being
the most ferocious and destructive, stamping with his feet what he cannot
destroy. The apostle Paul photographs the characters both of the Gentiles
and of the Jews in lines, and colors which all history attests. The
testimony of intelligent travellers and missionaries assures us that the
heathen of the present generation are in moral character as hideous as the
heathen of past ages. This wickedness, thus darkening the historic page, is
not to be excused on the plea of ignorance. God has never left himself
without witness. "The invisible things of him since the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." They have
known that "God gave them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts,
with food and gladness." His law has stood written on their hearts; and
the story of his supernatural interpositions has gone to all the world.
Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Greece, Rome, have had the story told them, and
might have known its full purport if they had desired the knowledge of
God's ways. And what a wonderful comment upon the poisonous influence of a
perverse heart that has given itself to sin, that the revelation of God to
Israel had so little power over the souls of the chosen race! Even
Josephus represents that the Jews of his time were the most wicked people
on the face of the earth. No doubt, in important respects civilization had a
favorable influence; but civilization itself became the occasion of
corruption. The Greek and Roman writers abound in testimonies to the great
corruption that reigned in the most civilized and refined nations of the
earth, and in the character of persons of the highest rank and influence.
The Greek and Roman military power was used for the enslavement and
robbery of the ruder nations. And the same wild scene of slaughter and
pillage continues to the present day--the game of war still played by the
nations on various pretenses. The support of armies has been the greatest
burden of mankind, exhausting the productions of the field and factory,
and even the wide ocean. The villanies of trade are count. less. The
adulteration of all articles of food, of wear, and of medicines, and often
of the most dangerous character, abound on every side. Many live on the
vices and miseries of their fellow-men, reducing innumerable women and
children to starvation, selling to those who ought to feed them maddening
and murderous poisons. Large and often triumphant politied parties sustain
these wretches in their villanous trade, and share with them the spoils,
buying their nefarious votes with nefarious laws. In Great Britain and the
United States probably more capital is engaged in this atrocious business
than in any other. And these intelligent nations suffer this ruin to rage
from generation to generation. And slavery and the slave-trade forced on
us unspeakable horrors for hundreds of years. The unclean spirit, though
cast out, still manifests his foul temper, not only where he reigned, but
in vast numbers and regions long called free. The treatment the gospel as received presents another
aspect of human wickedness. The persecution and murder of the Son of God
has been already spoken of. "He was in the world," writes the apostle
John, "and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came
unto his own, and his own received him not." "This is the condemnation,
that light has come into the world, and men have loved the darkness rather
than the light, because their deeds were evil." As the apostles traversed
the earth on their mission of mercy they were everywhere persecuted with
murderous malice; and it is remarkable that the great Apostle to the
Gentiles himself was, before his conversion, a great persecutor, and made
havoc of the church. After Christianity spread its conquests till the
Roman empire became nominally Christian, Christianity became dreadfully
corrupted, and the whole Orient where it prevailed so extensively is now
overspread with a miserable formalism and a dead faith, where Mohammedism
or some other alien religion has not utterly displaced it. To a vast
extent the same corruption pervades Europe; and one America is almost
wholly occupied by debasing superstition, and the other America, partly
occupied by it, is seriously threatened with the same general spiritual
bondage. A grievous unbelief, worse than these corruptions of
Christianity, extensively prevails throughout the so-called Christian
world. Romanism in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain is often a mere
cover, and scarcely a cover, for some form of infidelity. And the same is
the case with much of the Protestantism of Continental Europe, and even of
Great Britain and of the United States. Infidels often make their proud boast that
Christianity, through their great discoveries, is well-nigh obsolete. The
history of the world proves abundantly that mankind, left to themselves,
or supplied with all the reformatory means in operation before Christ, are
likely to be forever the slaves of Satan, and need the mightiest divine
interposition for their salvation from delusion and sin.