encies of a theoretical dogma.

If any one, granting that the central efficacy of the mission of
Christ, dogmatically and objectively considered, lay in his
descent into Hades and in his resurrection, maintains that still
certain passages in the New Testament do ascribe an expiatory
effect directly to his death as such, we reply that this
interpretation is quite likely to be correct. And we can easily
trace the conception to its origin beyond the pale of revelation.
It was an idea prevalent among the Jews in the time of the
apostles, and before, that death was an atonement for all sins,
and that the death of the righteous atoned for the sins of
others.10 Now, the apostles might adopt this view and apply it
pre eminently to the case of Christ. This is the very explanation
given by Origen.11 De Wette quotes the following sentence, and
many others of the same purport,

10 Gfrorer, Gesehichte des Urchristenthums, abth. ii. pp. 187
190.

11 Mosheim, Commentaries on Christianity in the First Three
Centuries, Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 162-163.

from the Talmud: "The death of the just is the redemption of
sinners."12 The blood of any righteous man was a little atonement;
that of Christ was a vast one. The former all Protestants call a
heathen error. So they should the latter, because it sprung from
the same source and is the same in principle. If, then, there are
any scriptural texts which imply that the mere death of Christ had
a vicarious, expiatory efficacy, they are, so far forth, the
reflection of heathen and Jewish errors yet lingering in the minds
of the writers, and not the inspired revelation of an isolated,
arbitrary after expedient contrived in the secret counsels of God
and wonderfully interpolated into the providential history of the
world. But, if there are any such passages, they are few and
unimportant. The great mass of the scriptural language on this
subject is fairly and fully explained by the historical theory
whose outlines we have sketched. The root of the matter is the
resurrection of Christ out from among the dead and his ascent into
heaven.

It has not been our purpose in this chapter, or in the preceding
chapters, to present the history of the Christian doctrine of the
atonement, either in its intrinsic significance or in its
relations to subjective religious experience. We have only sought
to explain it, according to the original understanding of it, in
its objective relations to the fate of