en, that the
justice of God is satisfied by the atonement; we should be careful, we
think, to observe in what precise sense this proposition is true, and in
what sense it is false; in order that we may pursue the clear and shining
light of truth, neither distracted by the clamour of words nor enveloped
in clouds of logomachy.

There is a class of theologians, we are aware, and a very large class, who
regard the sufferings of Christ as a satisfaction to the retributive
justice of God. But this forms no part of the doctrine which we have
undertaken to defend; and, indeed, we think the defence of such a view of
the atonement clearly impossible. It is placed on the ground, that the
sins of the world, or of those for whom Christ died, have been imputed to
him; and hence he really suffers the inflictions of the retributive
justice of God. The objections to this scheme, which seek to remove the
apparent hardships and injustice of the sufferings of the innocent, by the
fiction of the imputation of the sins of the guilty, we shall not dwell
upon here; as we so fully considered them in the preceding chapter. To our
mind they are plainly unanswerable. We would vindicate the sufferings of
Christ no more than those of infants, on the ground that sin was imputed
to him, so as to render them just. On the contrary, we hold them to have
been wholly undeserved; and instead of vindicating them on the ground of
stern justice, we vindicate them on the ground of the infinite, unbounded,
and overflowing goodness of God.

It is easy to see that such a view of the atonement does not in the least
degree conflict with the justice of God. It merely teaches, that God has
provided for the salvation of the world by the sufferings of Jesus Christ,
who was without spot or blemish. Surely we cannot find it in our hearts to
object, that the sufferings of Christ for such a purpose are not
consistent with the justice of God, if we will only read a single page in
the great volume of nature and of providence. It has been said by Bishop
Butler, that such an objection "concludes altogether as much against God's
whole original constitution of nature, and the whole daily course of
divine providence, in the government of the world, i. e., against the
whole scheme of theism and the whole notion of religion, as against
Christianity. For the world is a constitution, or system, whose parts have
a mutual reference to each other; and there is a scheme of things
gradua