Among the preachers of Kentucky forty years ago, few were more highly respected than Carroll Kendrick. He was noted for austere morality, fervent piety, and the strictest ideas in church discipline. He spent his last days in California, and died in a ripe old age. His son and namesake, Dr. J. Carroll Kendrick, sends me the query quoted below, and prefaces it with a narrative of a midnight conversation held with another physician at the bedside of a dying patient. This physician said, in substance, "that the Christian religion is as irrational and unworthy of confidence as those which Christians denounce as false religions; that the very basis of it is the assumption that the God of heaven sent his Son into the world to suffer poverty, endure shame, and finally to die ignominiously, just to please him, or to satisfy some law of justice, or to have the approbation of those intelligences who might adversely criticize him if he pardoned [328] erring man without justice being meted out in some satisfactory way." The physician who said this was a member of an orthodox church and an officer in it. Dr. Kendrick thinks that "this talk voices what not a few would say if made to speak out their sentiments." His reflection,, thereon gave rise to the following query:

      PROF. JOHN W. MCGARVEY:--Is there "another side" in the matter of "The Atonement" (so emphasized by those who dwell on the "dignity of the law upheld," "the demands of the law met," "justice meted out," etc.), other than

      That, in the shedding of Christ's blood, the giving up of his life, he by dying was enabled to perform such a miracle as no one had ever performed, and of such an exalted nature, involving such inestimable interests to man, thereby demonstrating his superiority to man's hitherto invincible and inexorable foe to desirable existence--death;

      That through this convincing miracle (the resurrection from the dead) men might believe him to be what he asserted he was--divine; and if divine, worthy of all confidence as to his claims, as to his disposition toward men, and as to his ability to do for them--and which "intelligent acceptance of him" occasions man to take Christ as the "man of their counsel," his law as the "rule of their life"--his promises as the incentive to action--so developing characters suitable for the association of the "blest of earth and the pure of heaven"?

Fraternally,

JULIEN CARROLL KENDRICK.

      We may safely assert that our Lord's death involves all that is here so well expressed; but to say that it involves no more, would be to contradict some of the plainest utterances both of himself and his apostles. He says, for example: "The Son of man came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28). Now, a ransom is not merely a deliverance from captivity, but it is a price paid for such deliverance. It is not, therefore, a consideration affecting the relation between the ransomer [329] and him who is ransomed, but one between the ransomer and some third party. In this case the third party is not brought into view, and consequently the exact nature of the ransom is left in obscurity; but we dare not, because of this, reject the thought of a ransom, as we do when we confine the design of his death to the effects mentioned in the query. Again, he says: "This is my blood of the covenant shed for many for the remission of sins." "For the remission of sins" means in plainer English in order to the forgiveness of sins; and the forgiveness of sins is not, as some men who disregard the meaning of the commonest words assert, deliverance from the practice of sin, but just such forgiveness as we are commanded to extend to those who sin against us. It was in order that God might thus forgive, not those who are still living in sin, but those who have repented of their sins, that the blood of the covenant was shed. Here, as in the case of ransom, is something that affects the divine government in the administration of mercy; and it looks in a different direction from all that is written in the query.

      Identical in thought, though not in diction, is the well-known deliverance of Peter, that we are "redeemed" from our vain manner of life with the precious blood of Christ (1 Pet. 1:18, 19). Redemption is not mere deliverance, but deliverance by the payment of a price. The blood of Christ is declared to be the price, and this the apostle makes emphatic by the contrast, "not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, but with precious blood." I might add to this class of quotations, but I pass to another deliverance on the subject, which brings it before us in a slightly different point of view.

      Paul, in his most profound discussion of this very subject, speaks of Jesus thus: "Whom God set forth to [330] be a propitiation through faith, by his blood, to show his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:25, 26). Passing by what is said of the sins done aforetime--that is, under the former dispensations--and looking to that which is asserted of "this present season," we see it here very plainly asserted that Christ was set forth by God as a propitiation, by his blood, that God himself might be just, and at the same time justifier of him who believes in Jesus. Here is something quite different from that moral force by which the life and death and resurrection of Christ cause men to become believers in him, and consequently imitators of his virtues. It is something that enables God, after a man has thus been changed, to be just in justifying him--that is, in forgiving his sins. It is necessarily implied that, without this, God could not have justified even those who believe in Christ. And it is the fact of a propitiation which looks Godward, never manward, which has this enabling power.

      In this passage Paul penetrates the very core of this profound problem of the forgiveness of sins. Those who speak of the subject, as did the physician quoted by Dr. Kendrick, betray a want of appreciative thought on the subject, and at the same time a feeling of resentment toward explanations which have proved unsatisfactory. A very little reflection must impress any man with the thought that the exercise of pardon in any government, human or divine, is a hazardous procedure. Its abuse by many governors of our States is one of the crying evils of our civil administration. Seldom is the pardoning power exercised without the feeling on the part of many [331] citizens that it encourages the commission of crime, and any act which encourages crime is an act of injustice to the whole community. It is also, in many instances, an act of injustice to the criminal himself, who is seriously injured when encouraged to think that he can commit crime with impunity. It is evident from these considerations that in a perfect government over men, such as the divine government must of necessity be, no pardon can be justly granted that has such an effect on the criminal himself, or on others who might be encouraged to commit crime by the clemency extended to him. Paul teaches that the death of Christ was intended to meet this difficulty, if I may so style it, in the divine government, enabling God to be just to the sinner himself, and just to all under his divine government, while justifying from sin those who believe. This, now, is the revealed fact in the case, which we are to accept whether we can understand it or not; and I think that if men had accepted this fact without attempting to explain it, we should have been spared much perplexity. I think, too, that prevalent skepticism on the subject, which is no new thing under the sun, but one of the oldest, arises chiefly from mistaken attempts at explanation. I propose to resume the subject next week, and to speak definitely of some of these mistaken attempts.

[SEBC 328-332]