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A.T01TE1/LE!1TT.

REVIEW

OF

"ATONEMENT AND LAW."
(armour.)

S* G.rBURNEY, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Systematic Theology, Cumberland University.

"He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neigh
bor cometh and searcheth him."
"Christ died for us" — not in our place, but in our interest, on
our behalf

NASHVILLE, TENN.
Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House.
1S87.

6ra

PREFATORY.

THE following Review of "Atonement and Law"
was written at the request of members of the
Theological Class of Cumberland University of
' 1885-86, and is now, by their request and that of oth
ers who have read the manuscript, offered to the
public. Mr. Armour's object, of course, was the vindication
of what he believes to be the truth. I claim no more,
no less, for myself.
He, in the exercise of his indefeasible right of free
dom of speech, has written boldly and earnestly. I, in
the exercise of the same right, have written plainly
and freely. Though I have controverted many of his
positions and arguments with some freedom, I have
done so without the slightest unkindly feeling, and oft
en with high admiration of his candor, courage, and
ability. The differences between us are not diversities of
purposes, but of judgments, not concerning the fact,
but concerning the nature of the atonement. On this,
as on other difficult questions, Christians can very
w.isely agree to disagree, and love as though they fully
agreed. Free discussion is the crucible of truth, and is
reprehensible only when attended with acerbity of
feeling, or prosecuted in the interest of victory or party
merely. Theories, it is allowed, are answerable for their nec
essary consequences. A theory absurd in its conse-
¦ 3

4 Prefatory.
quences can not be true in itself. I have attempted to
test Mr. Armour's fundamental positions by this rule.
It is probable that I have educed many consequences
from his theory that he would not be willing to admit
logically inhere in it. Possibly in some instances I
may have misapprehended him, and thereby done him
an unintentional injustice. If at any time I perceive
that I have done this I will cheerfully make suitable
amends. The reader in the meantime will assume the
right to judge between us.
I am fully aware of the fact that in controverting
Mr. Armour's Substitutionary and Penal theory of
Atonement, I also controvert some of the fundamental
principles of the whole Substitutionary School. It
will therefore be exceedingly difficult for substitution-
ists of any school to judge impartially of the argu
ments presented against Mr. Armour's theory. We
very naturally look with suspicion upon an argument
that tends to subvert a long cherished and generally
accepted theory.
But while I expect rash condemnation from those who
have never investigated for themselves, whose faith is
purely an inheritance, and not the product of their
own patient and painstaking labor, I do as confidently
expect support from those who have the ability and
the courage to think for themselves.
Substitution has been the generally accepted theory
for centuries by those who hold to any theory of atone
ment. I certainly hazard nothing in saying that not
one in ten thousand of those who receive it has inves
tigated the prime question, Whether substitutionary
atonement with invariable double imputation is taught
in the Holy Scriptures? This has not been the real
point of inquiry. This has been gratuitously assumed,

Prefatory. t
and the great mass of thought has been expended in
efforts to explain this substitutionary and penal scheme
— e. g., Mr. Armour's book is a bold effort not to prove
the doctrine from the Bible, or from any thing else,
but to explain it — to put it in harmony with common
sense, and with science, etc.
Nothing is more difficult of explanation than non
entity. Hence, the great diversity of explanations.
Scarcely any two leading substitutionists agree. Mr.
Armour, dissatisfied with the arguments of all his
predecessors, attempts a new line of explanation and
defense. Do not these facts throw grave suspicion upon the
substitutionary principle itself?
After patient investigation, I am compelled to be
lieve the whole substitutionary and penal theory of
atonement an impossible conceit, unauthorized by the
Bible, incompatible with the fundamental principles of
moral government, and indefensible before the bar of
reason. I therefore beseech the discriminating reader
to weigh carefully and as impartially as possible the
arguments against Mr. Armour's theory. It is better
to sacrifice prejudice to truth than truth to inherited
error. I have not attempted in the following pages to say
all that truth requires against substitution. My object
has been rather to reply to Mr. Armour's peculiar
views. In doing this, however, I have stated facts that
are incompatible with a substitutionary atonement of
any kind.
I have attempted little more in these pages than td
test the strength of Mr. Armour's new defenses of the
substitutionary scheme. I have not even outlined an
adverse theory. This may be something of a disap-

6 Prefatory.
pointment to the reader. This defect — if it Is indeed a
defect— I hope to supply, Providence permitting, at no
distant day.
These arguments against Mr. Armour's scheme of
atonement, may be ignored, denounced, ridiculed — this
is easy — but they, I think, will not be answered. Be
lieving that this little book will, in the good providence
of God, be the occasion of stimulating its readers to a
more critical examination of the doctrine of atonement,
and that it will in this way contribute to the advance
ment of evangelical religion, I commit it to the gen
erous consideration of the Christian public.
S. G. BURNEY.
Lebanon, Tenn., November, 1SS6.

CONTENTS,

PAGE.
Animadversions upon Mr. Armour's Preface, , . . . 10
Animadversions upon the Introductory Chapter, . . 13
Section I.
The Divine Nature the Source of Divine Law, etc., . . 19
Section II.
Law as Force  43
Section III.
Law in Commandment,  47
Section IV.
Sundry Topics — Divine Sovereignty, Voluntary Necessity,
Confirmation,  77
Section V.
The Will  SS
Section VI.
Sin Strictly Debt,  87
Section VII.
" Substitution Normal in Law,"  95
Section VIII.
Substitution Proved to be Abnormal by the Impossibility of
itsConditions  115,
Section IX.
The Great Antitype Substitution,  131
Section X.
Suretyship an Re-instatement,  150
Section XI.
Penalty — Meritorious and Unmeritorious, . . . 159
(7)

S Contents.
Section XII.
Equivalent Penalty,  169
Section XIII.
Relaxation of Law and Self-condemnation, . . . 186
Section XIV.
Suretyship and Covenant Engagement, .... 193
Section XV.
Atonement a Variable Quantity,  196
Section XVI.
Intervention by Adequate Power  203
Section XVII.
Illustrations of Intervention,  218
Section XVIII.
Scientific Pretensions, ....... 232

ATONEMENT.

"ATONEMENT AND LAW: OR, REDEMP
TION IN HARMONY WITH LAW, AS
REVEALED IN NATURE. BY JOHN M.
ARMOUR."
This is an octavo of 240 pages, gotten up in good style, pub
lished by the Christian Statesman Publishing Company, 1520
Chestnut street, Philadelphia.
THIS book has produced something of a
sensation among those who are specially
interested in the study of theology. It has re
ceived high commendation from many that
hold to the doctrine that the great atonement
is substitutionary and penal in character, and
is provided for only a part of mankind. Some,
also, whose views are so far liberalized as to
allow that the great atonement is provided for
all men indiscriminately, are somewhat lavish
in their praise of the work.
Of course these claim the privilege of dis
senting from our author's ungracious limita-
rianism. Whether these high commendations
have been wisely bestowed remains to be
seen. If Mr. Armour has rendered any valu-
(9)

10 Atonement Reviewed.
able service to our common evangelical Chris
tianity, if he has so presented its great central
doctrine as to commend it with greater clear
ness and force to the reason and consciences
of men, and make it a greater power for good,
then due honor should be accorded to him,
both for his good intentions and for his sagaci
ty and skill in defense of truth.
I confess to very grave doubts as to such
results. The ground of this distrust will be
indicated in the following pages.
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON MR. ARMOUR'S
PREFACE.
In his preface our author says: "The views
presented in this volume have not been hasti
ly adopted. They are the result of many
years of patient and absorbing study. They
have, moreover, been fully submitted to the
judgment of many eminent scholars and theo
logians, and have received their unequivocal
and hearty approval."
Remarks. — Approval by many "eminent
scholars and theologians" is not proof of the
soundness of Mr. Armour's "views." Papal
supremacy, transubstantiation, general atone
ment, etc., receive " the unequivocal and hearty
approval of many eminent scholars and theo-

Comments on Preface. n
logians." But Mr. Armour does not, on this
account, believe these doctrines. Such ap
proval may give something of respectability,
but on strongly contested questions is not
even presumptive evidence.
Mr. Armour continues: " While I have been
led strongly to dissent from certain views and
statements with which the scriptural doctrine
of Atonement has been overlaid, that doctrine
in its historical evangelical form will be found
to be maintained in these pages."
Remarks. — From this we learn that our
author does not object to the old substitution
ary theory as such, but to the manner in which
it is stated.
These defective statements he points out
and attempts to correct in his subsequent
pages. He continues: "The views here pre
sented indicate the ground from which the or
thodox doctrine of the great satisfaction must
at last be defended."
Remarks. — Our author has fully persuaded
himself that he has founded the doctrine of
atonement (improperly called the great satis
faction) upon an everlasting rock. So thought
the great Turrettin, when he demolished the
Copernican theory, and proved to the stisfac-

12 Atonement Reviewed.
tion of orthodoxy that the earth did not move.
He, however, was in error, but possibly not
more so than is Mr. Armour.
Mr. Armour says: "That the great redemp
tion was wrought out in perfect accordance
with law as revealed in nature and providence ;
that it was no departure from the divinely or
dained order in the administration of law ;
that it was merely the highest exemplification
of principles, recognized everywhere through
out the divine government, are conclusions to
ward which Christian thought has been tend
ing in all the ages past."
Remarks. — (i) That the plan of salvation
should be in strictest accord with the moral
law which is intended for the government of
the moral world, is a conclusion fully author
ized by every thing we know of God and
nature. (2) That a rational and religious creat
ure should crave a religion that does not require
an implicit faith in palpable absurdities is a
most reasonable thing. For both these rea
sons Mr. Armour's theory of atonement will
be rejected by thousands of thoughtful men.
That our author's theory of atonement in
stead of being a satisfaction of law, is a breach
of law, a nullification of law " by sovereign
prerogative " — an ingenious piece of sophistry,

Comments on Preface. 13
which is unworthy of rational acceptance,
will be made sufficiently manifest in the fol
lowing pages.
ANIMADVERSIONS UPON INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER.
"Atonement and Law " comprises two parts,
with an " Introductory Chapter." The intro
ductory chapter discusses " The scientific ob
jections to the prevalent theory of Redemp
tion. The real question at issue: Is Re
demption the great exception? Recognized
analogies and correspondences; Scripture
emblems; False theories of atonement fore
doomed; No relaxation of law in accepting
the satisfaction of Christ; Sovereignty in re
demption as in creation; The miracle of re
demption, like all miracles, by intervention of
adequate power, not by suspension of law."
QUOTATIONS FROM THIS CHAPTER.
1. " Christian apologists have generally, in
the face of the enemy (skeptical scientists),
admitted that revealed religion is, in the main
features, the ' great exception.' . . . Redemp
tion by intervention and by substitution an
exception that is not provided for in the nature
of law." (p. 20.)

14 Atonement Reviewed.
Remarks. — This admission in reference
to substitution is a high compliment both to
the sagacity and candor of these Christian
apologists. If Christians generally, and sci
entists universally, have adjudged substitution
to be " not provided for in the nature of law,"
then Mr. Armour ought to furnish us with
some convincing reasons before he asks us to
set aside this testimony and accept his state
ments; for there is, perhaps, no question with
in the range of human knowledge, in which
Christians and scientists are more fully agreed
than that substitution is not provided for in the
nature of law.
2. " There are mighty arguments in favor of
a bolder course. The attack of the enemy
will constrain the Christian hosts to seek firm
er ground." (p. 20.)
Remarks. — (1) Our author here assumes
that the whole Christian hosts are substitution-
ists — a slight mistake. (2) He here concedes
that substitution can not be defended without
firmer ground than that upon which it has hith
erto been maintained — that is, if substitution is
"not provided for in the nature of law."
Then the whole theory of substitutionary
atonement is incapable of defense. I think
our author is fully justified in staking the

Comments on Preface. 15
whole issue upon the simple question as to
whether substitution with double imputation
is provided for in the nature of law. This is
an admission that Turrettin, Hodge, Syming
ton, and Christian apologists generally have
asserted substitution on insufficient grounds.
3. "The Bible, more than any other book
in the world, appeals to nature with boundless
confidence. The proper study of nature is
quite as necessary to the understanding of the
Bible as is the study of the Bible to the prop
er interpretation of nature." (p. 22.)
Remarks. — This is admissible. But having
appealed to nature, why does not our author
stick to it, and abide by its faithful teachings ?
Why does he shun nature when he wishes to
find analogies in the interest of substitution
with double imputation ? Why appeal to
fickle, whimsical, human laws for such analo
gies ? Mr. Armour knows why. The vam
pire does not go to the cucumber for blood.
Instinct directs it elsewhere.
4. " Theories of the Atonement, constructed
in defiance alike of Scriptural Truth and Natu
ral Law, are foredoomed." (p. 24.)
Remarks. — (1) In this I fully concur. As Mr.
Armour's substitutionary atonement, with its

16 Atonement Reviewed.
double imputation, is " constructed in defiance
alike of Scriptural Truth and Natural Law,"
and rests exclusively upon some supposed
analogies with human law, I deem it hopeless
ly " foredoomed." (2) But why does our au
thor persist in insinuations that substitution is
provided for in natural or physical law? He
does not, dares not categorically affirm it;
yet he puts the matter before his readers as if
such substitutions were a universally known
fact. Perhaps he wishes us to believe that
such substitutions are provided for, but that
they do not occur because the Creator has
neglected to provide adequate substitutes.
5. "The Saviour once provided, and having
freely come under law, thenceforward all was
done in obedience to law. All that was needed
for our Redemption the law itself then required
of him who became our surety, and who was
under law, and was ' mighty to save.' " (p. 26).
Remarks. — (1) The doctrine is that Christ
having become a substitute for the elect, and
fulfilled the penalty and precept of the law in
their stead, the law imperatively requires their
salvation. If they are not willing to be saved
the law requires that they should be made
willing— regenerated and necessitated to be
lieve, repent, be justified, and saved. The

Comments on Preface. 17
process smacks of physical rather than of
moral law. (2) Mr. Armour, of course, be
lieves himself one of the elect, and, hence, be
lieves that God or Christ is bound by the law,
or something he calls law, to save him. Now,
it would be a matter of interest to psycholog
ical science to know whether his faith and
his feelings have always been in exact har
mony on this subject.
Though, according to his theory, he was
actually saved before Adam was created, he
has not always been conscious of that fact. I
have never known any person, except vulgar
blasphemers, who could say that they either
believed or felt that God is under obligations
to save them, when speaking of their personal
salvation. What a nondescript state of feel
ings would arise out of the two inhomogeneous
beliefs — that I am a miserable and guilty sin
ner, and that God is under obligations to save
me, or rather has already saved me !
Creed-blind theorists alone, I think, are
capable of holding such incongruities as that a
man may be innocent before the bar of Divine
Justice, but guilty before the bar of conscience;
justified in heaven, but condemned on earth;
have a law-title to eternal life, but subjective
ly fit only for spiritual death.
6. "God provided a Saviour for all men; no

18 Atonement Reviewed.
sovereign choice of part of our race; God
gave Christ to die, and Christ died, alike for all
men." (p. 27.)
Mr. Armour quotes these words reprobative-
ly, and vents over them a flood of emotional
rhetoric. As there is neither logic nor poetry
in his rhetoric, I will not quote it. His sensi
bilities seem to be shocked at the idea that
Christ died alike for all men. That, with him,
means universalism, though it does not with
any except substitutionists of the closest
school. He quotes, exclamatively, the words, "No
sovereign choice ! Ah ! What do we meet?
Sovereignty, actually determining some to life
and some to destruction, and this after all had
been alike embraced in one glorious purpose of
love; nay, had been redeemed by the same
precious blood!"
Mr. Armour seems horrified at the idea
that God can be sovereign, and yet make sal
vation conditional. He understands the word
sovereign in the sense of the unconditional,
for which he has no authority. He also es
teems it monstrous heresy to allow that any
for whom Christ died could, by possibility, be
lost. Paul, however, was of a different opin
ion. (Rom. xiv. 15.)

SECTION I.

IN PART I. MR. ARMOUR DISCUSSES LAW,
MORAL AND NATURAL.
This comprises four chapters. The first treats of " Motion,
Force, and Life;" the second of "The Latest Idol — the Nature
of Things;" the third of "The Nature of Moral Law," and the
fourth of " The Will."
THESE several topics are not very closely
discriminated in the discussion — are, in
fact, very much blended. The most of these
topics have only the slightest connection with
the main subject of the book, the Atonement,
and for this reason will not be specially no
ticed. In our author's estimation, the atonement is
purely a matter of law. Law, consequently,
is the obtrusive theme of discussion, running
through the whole book.
On the subject of law he says many true
things, many good things. His utterances,
however, are vigorous rather than clear;
they impress rather than instruct. His vehe
mence and earnestness make the reader feel
(19)

20 Atonement Reviewed.
that he ought to believe something, without
showing him exactly what he is expected to
believe. I will briefly refer to a few instances:
i. Under the head of "Motion, Force, and
Life" (p. 33), he says: " Law has its origin in
the nature of God. This is true of natural as
well as of moral law, for they are not separated;
they are not separable; they do not merely
co-operate, nor is it the whole truth to say
that they become one — they are one in awful,
onward movement in the universe."
Remarks. — (1) Here we have a combina
tion of strong, plain words, but I do not know
exactly what I am expected to believe. The
first proposition gives me no distinct idea as to
the source of the law. If our author means that
law grows spontaneously and necessarily out
of the nature of God, he evidently logically
involves himself both in fatalism and atheism;
for acts only, not natures, are productive or
causative. If God's being and nature are
necessary, not voluntary, and if that necessary
nature is necessarily the source of law, it is
of course the origin of every thing else, and
fate, or God, as fate, rules the world. Hence,
if our author's words are taken in their ordi
nary forces, he teaches essential error when

Law, Moral and Natural. 21
he says, " law has its origin in the nature of
God." If he does not mean his words to be
taken literally, then I do not know what he
means. Any philosophy that refers the origin
of law, or any thing else, to the nature of God
instead of his acts, is chargeable with atheism.
Action alone gives origin to things, but natures
never act. They are only the characteristics of
the presupposed actors. (2) I am also in a
fog as to our author's meaning in what he
says about the relation of natural and moral
law. Does he mean that they are the same or
different laws ? He says "they do not mere
ly co-operate." This means that they are dis
tinct. Again, he says, " Nor is it the whole
truth to say that they become one." This
means that they have been distinct, but have
coalesced and become one. Again, he con
tinues, " They are one in awful, onward move
ment." This means, or seems to mean, that
they have lost their distinct individuality and
become one.
If our author means that physical and moral
law in relation to the individual have the same
general, not specific, ends, then no protest
need be offered. If he means that neither can
be violated with impunity, no dissent should
be offered. But if he means that they are so
related that the violation of one necessarily

22 Atonement Reviewed.
involves the violation of the other, he evident
ly deceives himself. It is probably true that
no one can violate the moral law without ex
periencing more or less physical evil. But the
law of our physical well-being may be violated
without a violation of moral law, otherwise
all deaths by accident are murders.
Our author says these laws " are one in aw
ful, onward movement in the universe." Here
the exact meaning is obscured by the glitter
of the rhetoric.
2. Mr. Armour, in his onslaught upon the
" latest idol, the nature of things," has some
thing more to say about the source of law
(pp. 49, 50): "There is nothing determined
by the nature of God which is not determined
by the will of God. To attribute certain de
terminations to the will of God, and others to
his nature, is to make a distinction for which
there is not only no foundation, but one that
is inconsistent with the very conception of an
infinitely perfect being. What proceeds from
the nature of God proceeds from the will of
God." Remarks. — There is no want of clear
ness in these propositions. God is a necessary
being; his nature is equally necessary. His
will is in all determinations identical with his

Law, Moral and Natural. 23
nature. Hence, his acts are as necessary as
his being; or Mr. Armour here concedes that
the divine nature determines and the divine
will determines: "What proceeds from the
nature proceeds from the will; and to discrim
inate between these determinations, or be
tween what proceeds from the nature and
what from the will, is to make a distinction
which has no foundation."
Now, to determine is the highest conceiv
able form of action. But to act is to be caus
ative of something. If the divine nature acts
at all, it must cause or originate law, all divine
law. Now, this is all the worshiper of the
" latest idol " claims — especially those who say
that the absolute standard of right is the divine
nature. The real point of difference between Mr.
Armour and the idolaters seems to be this:
The latter make the divine nature the absolute
standard of right, while the former makes the
divine nature, inclusive of the divine will, the
absolute standard; for he says (p. 51): "But
if God's nature, which makes right right, is a
nature wherein his will has place, and is in
glorious activity and dominancy, how can his
will be spoken of as, in any sense, excluded
from making right right? " The single point
of difference between the theories seems to be

24 Atonement Reviewed.
that one makes the will a part of the divine
nature, and the other excludes it. Whatever
may be the value of this difference, it is de
cidedly against Mr. Armour.
First, if the will is included in the divine
nature, and the divine nature as thus consti
tuted determines the right, or originates law,
then the will itself can not be the standard of
right, as our author alleges; for this would be
to make a -part of the divine nature determi
native of the right or law, which is simply
absurd. Those who make the divine nature
determinative of the right are involved in no
such absurdity.
Secondly, Mr. Armour, I think, gains noth
ing to compensate his theory for this serious
loss. He can not afford to make the will a part
of the divine nature, and at the same time in
dependent of that divine nature. This would
make the will independent of itself.
Nor can he afford to make the will a part of
the divine nature, and yet say that the divine
nature determines the will to action; for this
would make the will, so far as it is a factor in
the divine nature, determine itself, which in
volves, as Edwards has clearly shown, the
absurdity of an endless regressus.
The theory against which Mr. Armour is

Law, Moral and Natural. 25
battling avoids this absurdity. It would be
exceedingly difficult to put all Mr. Armour's
statements in harmony with himself. Note
the following:
(1) "What is determined by his nature is
determined not for but by his will." (p. 50.)
Then it follows, of course, that the will be
ing a part of the nature we have the will de
termining itself. This again involves the fatal
regressus. (2) The will "in glorious activity and domi
nancy." The will, then, being a part of the
divine nature, the will is in a state of domi
nancy over the will.
(3) " The will of God, being of his nature,
is itself the absolute standard of right." (p.
50.) If the will was the whole of the divine
nature the proposition would not be absurd.
But it is only of, or a part of that nature, conse
quently can not of itself, or independent of
other factors in that nature, be the absolute
standard of right. Just as well say a -part is
equal to the whole.
It seems to be sufficiently clear that our au
thor has worsted himself in his battle against
the "latest idol," not because the "latest idol"
is invulnerable, but because our author seeks
to replace it with something far less defensible.
Both theories of the source of the divine

26 Atonement Reviewed.
law or rule of right are radically false; both,
when carried to their logical consequences,
lead to fate, and to atheism as well.
To posit the rule of right outside of God,
and make it independent of him, as Dr. Haven
and many others do, or to make it the product
of the divine nature, whether that nature in
cludes or excludes the divine will, is to ex
clude freedom from the whole world and put
God under the dominion of necessity.
The first theory asserts that God is not the
author of moral law, but is bound by it, and
somehow comes to be the executive of it.
This denies to God supremacy.
But if he is not supreme, then he is not God
at all. In regard to the other theory, it is
hardly necessary to say that God has as little
control over his being and nature, or what
makes him what he is, as he has over any
thing that might be outside of him, or inde
pendent of him.
If he can act only as impelled by a power
within him, called his nature, then he of
course has no more power over himself than
has the heart over its necessitated contractions,
or the oak over its growth.
The following quotations (pp. 54-56) will
further enlighten the reader concerning the
relation of law to the law-giver:

Law, Moral and Natural. 27
" What we recognize in the realms of moral
or natural law, as that which could not but be,
we should recognize as logically connected with
the absolute perfection of the one being whose
existence, and whose perfection, and whose
will, rendered necessary that entire nature of
things of which so much is predicated."
Remarks.— Here are named three factors
by which the nature of things is necessitated
— the existence, the perfection, and the will of
God. Which is the determining force? Or,
are they all equally determinative of the
result? It is manifest that perfection presup
poses existence, and our author makes will an
essential part of the perfection or nature. It
hence follows that for God to be is to necessi
tate the "entire nature of things," or what
ever is possible.
2. Again, " The necessary existence of God
settles every thing, leaves nothing conditional
or contingent, determines all the axioms in the
realms of moral and natural law. The nature
of God being what it is, these could not but
be as they are, and this is true of what are
called the free and sovereign works or acts of
God, even as of those distinguished from them
as his necessary acts. This view, in no re
spect interferes with the doctrine of pure and

28 Atonement Reviewed.
mere sovereignty; for the sovereign acts of
God proceed from his nature as do those we
call his necessary acts, for these were deter
mined from eternity as fully and irrevocably
as his necessary acts. When God says, ' I
will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,'
he assuredly means to set before us his will in
its utmost freedom and sovereignty. But this
supreme act of free and sovereign grace is
the act of God himself — an act unto which
the whole nature of God (his will being in
cluded in that nature) moved him.
"That God might have done otherwise in
this matter, and yet have been the God he is,
is a theory of well-meaning theologians — a
theory inconsistent with the highest concep
tion of God. That the saved deserved noth
ing, that they had no claim upon God, that
there was noobligationwpon God from without,
must never be forgotten; but to hold that the
will of God acted for our salvation when his
nature did not require it, is to glorify the will
of God at the expense of a supposed nat
ure of God. In fact, we discover what the
nature of God requires him to do mainly by
what he, by his will, actually does. Freedom
or sovereignty in God does neither imply («)
any dissociation of the act from the nature of
God, nor (b) any doubt or contingency as to

Law, Moral and Natural. 29
the result. To attribute to God a sovereignty
that does either of these, is not to honor
but to dishonor him. There are, and perhaps
ever will be, those who are unable to accept
the doctrine that acts may be predetermined
and certain from eternity, and yet be, in the
fullest sense, free acts. There may be those
who imagine that freedom, whether in God
or in man, necessarily involves uncertainty.
For such notions there is perhaps no effectual
cure." Remarks. — (I have made this long quota
tion that the reader may fully understand the
animus of Mr. Armour's philosophy. He
certainly displays admirable courage. His
mode of presenting his theory stands in bold
contrast with the timid, half-apologizing style
of many who hold substantially the same phi
losophy.) (1) The basal and all-controlling principle
of his theory is that all things in the universe,
God included, are just as they are from re
morseless necessity. The logic is substan
tially thus: God exists not of choice but of
necessity — his nature is not optional, but nec
essary, and his will is included in his nature
(properly no will at all). This necessitated
nature necessitates all divine acts, so called.

30 Atonement Reviewed.
These necessitated acts necessitate all the en
tities and events of the universe. '
God being necessarily what he is, it was not
possible for him to necessitate any thing more
or different from what he has necessitated;
nor possible for any event that occurs in the
dominion either of matter or of spirit not to
occur just as it does occur; nor for any other
event to occur than what does actually occur.
The God of the Armourian philosophy seems
to be an omnipotent, conscious force shut up
by an indigenous necessity to move, and to
move in a particular way; not free not to
act, nor free to act differently from what he
does. This conscious, omnipotent force is free
in Mr. Armour's esteem, but it is freedom
without a possible alternative — free like -the
revolving earth.
(2) Mr. Armour seems to be involved in
grave embarrassment concerning the divine
nature. He makes the will a part of the nat
ure, yet God does what he does by his will.
He says: "In fact we discover what the
nature of God requires him to do mainly by
what he, by his will, actually does."
Here we have the strange doctrine that
God is required by his will, as a factor in his
nature, to do what he does — that is, the nature
and the will are confounded, and yet distinct.

Law, Moral and Natural. 31
Mr. Armour may understand this; certainly
no one else understands it.
(3) Again, all requirements or imperatives
are laid upon the will. Requirements are
never made of stones or things without will.
But according to our author, the will, as a fac
tor in the divine nature, lays imperatives
upon the will. Here master and servant are
confounded. The will that obeys the require
ment is the will, which, as a factor in the
nature, requires the obedience.
(4) Again, according to our author, God is
not under obligations from without to save any
body, but his nature requires him to save
some; for "to hold that the will of God acted
for our salvation when his nature did not re
quire it, is to glorify the will of God at the ex
pense of a supposed nature of God." But
there is no such thing as a Divine Being apart
from the divine nature. We might as well
talk of matter apart from all the properties of
matter as of a Divine Being apart from his
nature. There consequently is absolutely
¦nothing upon which the divine nature can lay
its imperatives to save some.
Again, admitting all our author's impossible
conceits, it is pertinent to inquire: If the di
vine nature requires God to save some, why

32 Atonement Reviewed.
not all? According to our author's philosophy,
the divine nature required God to make man,
just as he is, sins and all. Now, the point
pleading for solution is, whether this same di
vine nature requires God to save a part and
destroy a part of those whose being and
character his own nature necessitated? Might
we not as well say that gravity requires one
apple to fall to the earth and another, from
the same limb, to take a jaunt to the moon; or
that vitality requires of one grain of corn to
project its roots into the soil and another into
the air? Is the divine nature, which is as
sumed to give law to God, nothing more than
a capricious, lawless something which can
Stultify itself by doing contradictory things?
Again, if the nature of God requires him to
do " by his will what he actually does," then
does not the nature of man require him to do
what he actually does?1 or, rather does not the
nature of God, which necessitated man's nat
ure, require man to do all that he actually
does? Certainly, and this is predestination by
" the necessary nature of God."
Mr. Armour's philosophy furnishes every
man with a revelation of all God's secret de
crees concerning himself. To experience a
thought, a feeling, a purpose, is to know that

Law, Moral and Natural. 33
God decreed it. The history of every man is
a history of God's eternal purposes concern
ing the man.
If the reader will study Mr. Armour's phi
losophy he can not fail to recognize it as one
of the most relentless and most bunglesome
schemes of fatality ever conceived by the hu
man mind. Its logical consequence is atheism.
(5.) Mr. Armour deems it inconsistent with
the highest conception of God to concede it
possible for him ever to act otherwise than as
he does. He also thinks it a great weakness
to deny that predestinated or necessitated acts
in God or men are inconsistent with such free
dom as renders a true morality and a rational
religion possible.
Among those guilty of this weakness, I will
mention Herman Lotze, who was confessedly
one of the brightest lights of the scientific
world. The following quotations taken from
" Philosophy of Religion " may be profitably
studied in connection with Mr. Armour's
views of freedom. He asserts freedom with
the possibility of an alternative.
He says (pp. 99-102): "But we know
surely that we only demand this formal free
dom because we regard it as the conditio sine
qua non for the fulfillment of ethical com
mands, whose obligatory majesty we consider
3

34 Atonement Reviewed.
to be the most absolute certainty, and one
that needs no derivation from any other
source whatever. This conviction is the ab
solutely fundamental point upon which the en
tire religious character of our view of the
world depends. And for him who does not
directly experience and acknowledge this, all
questions of religious philosophy are altogeth
er superfluous.
" The ideas of freedom are not induced by
speculation, but they rest entirely upon the
fact of that penitence and self-condemnation
in which we believe we find the immediate
assurance of the possibility that the choice,
whose failure is now repented of, might have
been reached even sooner than it was.
"This idea is, in an obscure way, the first
and most natural, the one that has precedence
in human culture. It was not till a later
period that the scientific contemplation of
nature disclosed the conception of a ' neces
sary causal connection,' and then extended it
over the whole course of the world, so that
now the idea of freedom seems like a strange
exception, and, as such, is denied (denied by
atheists, who assert a universal necessity, but
this very necessity is what necessitarian theists
call the highest possible form of freedom).
It is acknowledged that even the ethical ideals

Law, Moral and Natural. 35
originate in the mechanical course of psychic
al development.
" But how much influence they have upon
our action, depends entirely upon the involun
tary states and movements within our own inte
rior being. It is, therefore, due to a process of
nature that the impulse to good actions, or
even to bad actions, preponderate within us,
and the mechanical conditions for such results
may be strengthened by a correct or by a per
verted education. (So reason the atheist and
the necessitarian theist).
"But to be consistent and candid about it,
an action in the proper sense, such as would
issue from our own ego, will then no longer
exist. And even the inducement to all such
reflections — that is, the feeling of penitence —
will be regarded as a disagreeable state, about
like a feeling of sickness; and it will be main
tained (by the necessitarian) that the wish in
volved in this feeling — the wish that we had
acted differently — gives no assurance what
ever of this having been possible at an earlier
moment. " Such views as the foregoing are not to be
got at by speculation; they involve no contra
diction of cognition. If they are abandoned,
it can be done only upon the basis of an un-
demonstrable belief that after all there is di-

36 Atonement Reviewed.
rectly disclosed in the aforesaid self-condem
nation the possibility of a free choice, without
which 'the bad conscience' and the pain of
'penitence' would continue to be totally inex
plicable phenomena in a rational order of the
world." This brief but clear statement of the doc
trine of freedom, with an alternative in oppo
sition to the doctrine of necessity, is followed
by a concise and cogent reply to the objections
that are often urged against true freedom. We
should not fail to note the difference in the
methods of Armour, the Christian theologian,
and Lotze, the Christian philosopher. The
former adopts the scholastic a priori method,
and infers that God's acts are necessarily as
they are because he is necessarily as he is; or
that his being and nature necessarily cause,
determine, limit his acts, so that they must be,
but can not be different from what they are.
Having reached this conclusion, it is an ob
vious and necessary corollary that the same
principle applies to every thing in the universe,
both entities and events; hence, whatever is,
is of necessity, and necessarily is as it is.
But to save theism, moral distinctions, and
religion,, this necessity must, by a monstrous
abuse of terms, however, be called freedom.
The Christian philosopher adopts the Ba-

Law, Moral and Natural. 37
conian, the a posteriori, method. Instead of
attempting to determine the actions of intelli
gent beings from abstract ideas of their nature,
he determines the nature of such beings by
their acts. Instead of assuming to know the
nature of things and then infer their effects
from this nature he pursues the less preten
tious but more rational method of judging of
causes by these effects — of things by their
phenomena. Instead of inferring that men act
under necessity because God necessarily exists,
he infers that men act freely from the effect
of their acts upon their own psychical states,
their feelings, their consciences. He takes it
for granted that God in nature is consistent
with himself — does not contradict himself by
necessitating an act and then necessitating
pain, remorse, a bitter sense of self-condem
nation for committing that necessitated act.
Penitence, self-condemnation, remorse are
unimpeachable witnesses of freedom with an
alternative. If freedom with an alternative is an essen
tial characteristic of the human mind, it is the
sum of absurdities to deny it of the divine
mind. This I suppose would be universally
conceded.

SECTION II.

LAW AS FORCE AND LAW AS COM-
MANDMENT.
MR. ARMOUR says (p. 34): "Natural law
is but the name we have given to the ob
served uniform method of the acting of the Su
preme Power, whether acting directly or by
means of any series of second causes however
extended. When in common language we
speak of any result as produced by the operation
of natural law, we can mean nothing else than
the acting of some power or being, according
to an established and uniform method."

Remarks. — The principal objection to this
statement in regard to law is its indecision as
to the manner in which the Supreme Power
acts, " whether acting directly or by means of
any series of second causes." Our author
seems sometimes to favor one and sometimes
the other method.
My principal object in making the citation
is to compare it with what he says of natural
(38)

Law as Force and Commandment. 39
law on p. 68: "Law as force and law as com
mandment, these are the two forms of law
known to us. They are both directly from
the will of God. Infinite power confessedly
insures the inviolability of every natural law.
Infinite power sustains every moral law."
Remarks. — (1) Here we have natural "law
as force." We can put this in harmony with
what he has previously said of law as a "uni
form method of acting " by taking the word
law to mean the force that acts according to
uniform method. But this reduces his "law
as force " to the unmeaning form force as
force. (2) He says: "They (natural and moral law)
are both directly from the will of God." Then
law must be something distinct from that will,
must have objective reality, must be some
thing more than "the observed uniform act
ing of the Supreme Power," or conception of
the mind; must be itself a force capable of
action, for action is the only test of existence.
(3) " Infinite power confessedly insures the
inviolability of every natural law." In what
sense must we take the word law in this state
ment, in that of an observed order of acting,
or of that which acts? If we understand it

40 Atonement Reviewed.
in the sense of an observed order of acting,
then we can never, intentionally or otherwise,
do physical harm to ourselves, others, or any
thing else; for its inviolability is insured by in
finite power, and no harm can come except
by violation of law. But if we take law to
mean that which acts "according to an estab
lished and uniform method," then inviolability
seems to be an unnatural and unmeaning
predicate of it. The earth, the sun, the air,
the horse, etc., all act, but we would not be
willing to predicate either violability or invio
lability of such things.
What our author really means by " law " in
these propositions, I do not know, but suppose
that in the last he means " the observed and
uniform method of acting."
But if the word is taken in this sense, then
the question arises, Is it true that infinite pow
er confessedly insures the inviolability of every
natural law? Our physical well-being depends
upon compliance with certain conditions.
These conditions and their established conse
quence may be expressed by the word law.
But infinite power does not insure the inviola
bility of this law. It insures only the relation
between cause and effect, antecedent and con
sequent. Not to comply with this established

Law as Force and Commandment. 41
order of antecedence is what is universally
understood by violating the law. If I violate
this I must take the consequences.
(4) Why does our author discriminate be
tween physical and moral law, making infinite
power insure the inviolability of one and only
sustain the other? Both, he tells us, are directly
from the will of God. One sustains exactly the
same relation to the physical world that the
other does to the moral world.
Taking the word law in either of the senses
named above, I see no sufficient reason for the
distinction indicated by our author. In the
quotation from page 38, Mr. Armour seems to
reject realism in toto; but in the last quota
tion he seems, but perhaps only seems, to
adopt it.
The word law is a convenient abstract term,
expressive of the ascertained relation of ante
cedent and sequence, condition and result.
But " law as force " has absolutely no existence.
There is no power, no force, no action in law.
Nor is the term properly used to express any
such an idea. It is simply a convenient ab
stract term for expressing, in a brief manner,
our conception of the orderly and uniform ac
tion and reaction of the forces or powers of
what we commonly call nature; or the orderly
and uniform methods by which God, imma-

42 Atonement Reviewed.
nent in all things, sustains and governs the
physical and moral world.
God himself is the motive power of the
world; nor has he delegated this power to
subalterns, improperly called law, as forces,
which he sustains by his " infinite power."
He is immanent in every thing, and acts in
and through every thing. ' The marvelous ac
tion and reaction of one thing upon another is
but the continuous exercise of his power. What
we call second causes are not his deputized
agents, but the instrumentalities and condi
tions of the exercise of his ubiquitous and
omnipotent power in the on-going of the world.
This divine action in nature, in every thing, is
conditioned — one event conditions another.
Hence, the relation of antecedence and se
quence, of cause and effect; hence the order
and trustworthiness of nature, or rather of this
ubiquitous and omnipotent power in nature.
The exercise of this divine power in the
physical and moral world is purposedly so
conditioned that man, in a limited sphere, may
furnish the requisite conditions of certain
events, and thus render the exercise of this
power, the source of good or evil, to himself
or to others. In fact, the whole of human ac
tivity consists in supplying the conditions of
the influence of this power for good or evil.

Law as Force and Commandment. 43
To do certain things is to supply the ante
cedents or conditions of good. To do the
contrary is to supply the conditions of evil.
The antecedents, the conditions given, the
consequences, the good or the evil, the re
ward or punishments inevitably follow. The
conditions are, in an important sense, from
men; the reward or punishment is from God.
This is God's method or rule of action in
dealing with men; and because it is his rule of
action, we call it his law. Hence, it is plain
that law is not in itself a force — is not an
agent or substitute for God — but is simply
the immutably fixed method, or rule, or plan,
according to which God himself acts in sus
taining and governing the world. Hence, to
do those things which God has fixed as the
conditions of Good is to obey the law; to do
the contrary things, is to disobey the law. To
obey is to insure the reward; to disobey is to
incur the penalty.
The law itself is simply our perception of
this divinely established relationship between
antecedents and their consequences — causes
and effects. This fixed relationship is of
course "from the will of God," but our ap
prehension of it is no more from the will of
God than are our other cognitions — is no more
sustained by " infinite power " than other hu-

44 Atonement Reviewed.
man conceptions. The mechanic and the rule
he works by are different things. The me
chanic is an entity — a power, a cause. The
rule is not an entity, or a cause, but a concep
tion of the mind — a pure ideal, and can never
do the work of the mechanic.
Again, God acts in all things, and through
this action all things exert their claims to ex
istence. Hence, philosophy requires us to be
lieve that action, or influence of some kind, is
the only test of being. Whatever acts exists,
for action implies an actor or power that acts.
What does not act does not exist, for exist
ence itself is action of some kind. Laws
neither act nor are acted upon. They cause
nothing, modify nothing, receive or suffer
nothing, consequently have no claims to ex
istence as entities. They exist only as thoughts
or images in the mind.
When we speak of the supremacy of law,
the majesty of law, the authority of law, the
inflexibility of law, the requirements of law,
the prohibitions of law, the rewards of law,
the penalties of law, the satisfaction of law,
we personify law, and attribute to it the func
tions of the law-maker.
What Mr. Armour wishes his readers to
understand by his Law as Force, is a puzzle.

Law as Force and Commandment. 45
He tells us so many diverse things about it
that we are simply bewildered:
1 . It is "the acting of some power or being ac
cording to an established and uniform method."
2. "It has its origin in the nature of God."
3. It is not God himself, for it is the perpet
ual demonstration of his presence and power.
(Is not a thing and its demonstration different
things ?)
4. It is not the divine will, for it is some
thing " directly from the will of God."
5. It can not be a mere conception of the
mind, for "infinite power insures its inviola
bility." 6. Natural and moral law, he tells us, " are
both directly from the will of God," and of
course not the will itself; and yet he tells us
that "the law for all moral beings is the will
of God in commandment." Solve the riddle,
who can?

Note. — Since writing the above I have
read Drummond's Natural Law in the Spir
itual World, and am gratified to find myself
sustained by his views on this subject. He
says (pp. 5, 6): "The fundamental conception
of law is an ascertained working sequence, or
constant order among the phenomena of
nature. This impression of law as order it is

46 Atonement Reviewed.
important to receive in its simplicity, for the
idea is often corrupted by having attached to
it erroneous views of cause and effect. In Its
true sense natural law predicates nothing of
causes. The laws of nature are simply statements
of the orderly condition of things in nature,
what is found in nature by a sufficient number
of competent observers. What these laws
are in themselves is not agreed. That they
have any absolute existence even, is far from
certain. They are relative to man in his many
limitations, and represent for him the constant
expression of what he may always expect to
find in the world around him. But that they
have any causal connection with the things
around him, is not to be conceived. The nat
ural laws originate nothing, sustain nothing;
they are merely responsible for uniformity in
sustaining what has been originated, and what
is being sustained. They are modes of oper
ations, therefore, not operators; processes, not
poWer. The law of gravitation, for instance,
speaks to science only of processes. It has
no light to offer as to itself. Newton did not
discover gravity — that is not discovered yet.
He discovered its law, which is gravitation,
but that tells us nothing of its origin, of its
nature, or of its cause."

SECTION III.

LAW IN COMMANDMENT.
MR. ARMOUR says (p. 69): "All beings
and things lower in the scale than
moral beings having free will, have the law
which governs them wholly ' implanted in the
very constitution of their nature; ' while moral
beings are under law which is wholly unto
them in the form of commandment. There is,
indeed, in the very constitution of their nature,
capacity for perceiving and obeying law when
and in what wTay soever made known unto
them, and this capacity creates an obligation
to obey law; they are not law unto themselves,
they have not the moral law revealed in the
very constitution of their nature. The law
for all moral beings is the will of God in com
mandment -made known unto them, and not
an inward principle."
Remarks. — Aside from the main issue I
have somewhat against these statements:
(1) Our author makes it a distinctive char-
(47)

48 Atonement Reviewed.
acteristic of moral beings that they have the
capacity for perceiving law when made known
unto them. He says: "There is, indeed, in
the very constitution of their nature, capacity
for perceiving and obeying law when and in
what way soever made known unto them."
Is this a revelation, or only an empty truism?
A stone or any thing else, I should think,
would have the capacity of perceiving a thing
when made known to it. Such a capacity is
hardly a distinctive characteristic of a " moral
being." (2) Does capacity create obligation? Our
author says " this capacity creates an obliga
tion to obey law." This, I think, is a new
revelation. But is it true? I should think
there could be no obligations to obey when
there is no capacity to perceive law; nor any
obligation when there is no capacity to obey
law, unless the capacity has been willfully de
stroyed. But it is loose thinking, or something
worse, to say that the capacity of perceiving
or of obeying, or of both perceiving and obey
ing, creates the obligation to obey. Such ca
pacity conditions obligation, but certainly does
not create it. If the principle is true in one
case, it is so in all; but a universal application
of it would make the sphere of human obliga
tion a sphere of darkness and confusion. If

Law in Commandment. 49
human capacity creates obligations, then to
whom or to what are all men obligated?
The philosophy seems to need revision.
Our author, in support of his doctrine that
" moral beings are wholly under law in com
mandment," says (pp. 70, 71): "His (Adam's)
sin consisted in making his own sinless nature
the law of his conduct; whereas God had
made his own revealed will, his command
ment, such law. The problem of the origin
of sin on any other view is darkness itself. . . .
If sin be conceived of as consisting in follow
ing natural sinless propensities in disregard of
outward law .... it is then much less diffi
cult to conceive how holy beings might trans
gress." Remarks. — (1) Mr. Armour considers this
solution of the difficult problems of moral
evil sun-clear. Certainly it is very clear to
anybody who happens to be able to conceive
things which are contradictory. The solution
has condemnation written upon its face. To
follow "natural sinless propensities in disre
gard of outward law " is a feat impossible of
accomplishment by man, or angel, or any con
ceivable creature. To follow natural sinless
propensities is an act of will; to disregard out
ward law is also an act of will. The first act
4

50 Atonement Reviewed.
is sinless, the second is sinful, but the two
acts are really one; therefore the same volun
tary act is both sinless and sinful.
Mr. Armour, instead of pouring a flood of
light on the hard problem, as he believes he
has done, has only intensified the darkness.
A propensity for an unlawful object may
naturally and sinlessly arise in the mind, but
the instant it is cherished, or not repressed by
an act of will, criminality intervenes. The
voluntary indulgence of the propensity itself
is the sin. Sin consists not in following a sin
less propensity, but in gratifying the desire for
unlawful objects. He that hateth his brother
without cause is a murderer. Hatred may
arise naturally and innocently, but to cherish
it, foster it, converts it into murder.
But the angels — does not Mr. Armour's
philosophy make them quite unhappy? If
they can not follow their natural and sinless
propensities without sinning, and if all happi
ness in heaven and earth consists in the grati
fication of desire, as philosophy and the Bible
teach, then the angels can not be happy. But
I think the angels are happy, and that our au
thor's philosophy needs reversing.
I conceive it possible for the angels, and re
deemed spirits as well, to attain a state in
which their strongest, or rather their only, de-

Law in Commandment. ci
sire will be to do those things that accord with
the will of God, and that the gratification of
this desire will constitute their highest and
only blessedness.
But according to Mr. Armour, the Creator
seems to have formed all rational creatures
with such a "sinless nature," "natural and
sinless propensities" — inward promptings and
aspirations, "to be above all," that they are
and must ever continue to be inclined to re
bellion — an irrepressible spirit of rebellion in
heaven, and of necessity a corresponding de
gree of unhappiness! Is this pessimism? If
not, what is it? Bit and bridle for the mule,
and a rod for the fool's back!
In opposition to subjective law, our author
says (p. 72): "'Of the trees of the garden
thou mayest freely eat.' We then need a di
vine warrant for the indulgence of the sinless
appetites of our nature."
Remarks. — Is Mr. Armour quite certain
that Adam never ate any thing before he re
ceived this permission?
How does he get his information? Suppose
the divine warrant had never been given, then
what? Would it have been sin to taste an
apple if the permission had been withheld?
Is it sinful for the millions of human beings

53 Atonement Reviewed.
now living, who never heard of Eden, and
have no law in commandment, to eat? If so,
whose fault is it, theirs or that of another?
The more reasonable view is, that this per
mission was given only for the purpose of
more definitely marking out the interdicted
tree, and emphasizing the prohibition put upon
it. Mr. Armour continues: "'Of the tree that
is in the midst of the garden thou shalt not
eat.' A limit must, then, be set by divine
commandment to the gratification of natural
sinless promptings."
Remarks. — (i) The text does not prove,
as Mr. Armour assumes, the non-existence of
law written in the heart, or concreated law, or
that law in commandment, and subjective law?
are mutually exclusive of each other. On the
contrary, the prohibition itself presupposes • in
the human mind such a relation between hu
man acts and their necessary consequences,
that the acts as conditions are determinative
of moral good or moral evil, according to the
intentions of the actor. This divinely estab
lished relation between antecedents, or condi
tions, and their consequences, is concreated
or subiective moral law.
It was manifestly the violation of this sub-

Law in Commandment. 53
jective law, rather than disobedience to the
objective prohibition that caused the humiliat
ing change in Adam's conscious relations to
his Creator.
Had his sin consisted solely in disobedience
to the outward precept, it having no corre
sponding response in his heart or moral nature,
the feelings consequent upon disobedience
could have been only those of fear or terror,
arising from the apprehension of external in
jury or external punishment, of which self-
condemnation or remorse forms no part. On
the contrary, he betrayed no apprehension
whatever of external injury or punishment
coming from without; but the evil experienced
is from within. Of this changed and vitiated
state of his moral nature he evinces the full
est consciousness from the moment of diso
bedience, and before he was arraigned face to
face with his Creator.
(2) This concreated law, while it is suffi
cient to reveal to us a sense of dependence
and of the rectitude of our motives, is not to us
an infallible guide. This is not because the
law itself is imperfect, but because of our ina
bility rightly to interpret it.
We accept the Bible as a standard infalli
ble in itself. But it is not so to us because

54 Atonement Reviewed.
we misread it; so of the laws of the physical
world. Mr. Armour seems to think that if subject
ive law exists at all, it must be in every re
spect incapable of misinterpretation.
(3) Of course it was impossible for Adam
to violate this prohibition without violating
this subjective law, which required him to
love or obey God. But, according to our
author, the only sin possible to Adam was to
eat the "interdicted fruit." No other moral
law had been given to him in commandment,
and of course no other sin was possible. No
sin possible except to eat of the fruit of a par
ticular tree?
Marvelous philosophy! If this was so with
Adam, how comes it to be different with his
posterity? Has God revised his plan of moral
government and made it harder on the un
fortunate children than upon their father?
Was it not possible for Adam to lie to his
wife, or to abuse her, or even kill her, or even
to curse God to his face?
Certainly. But he had received no com
mandment not to do such naughty things, and
of course it would have been no sin to do so,
as no law in commandment would have been
transgressed by doing it!
(4) Mr. Armour tells us that "law in com-

Law in Commandment. 55
mandment is the Only law, the only kind of
law moral beings can possibly be under."
To be under law is to be under obligations
to obey law. If no law to moral beings is pos
sible, except law in commandment, then it is
the giving of the commandment that creates
the obligation.
Mr. Armour, as we have seen, also tells us
that the " capacity (of perceiving and obey
ing) creates an obligation to obey law." Ac
cording to his philosophy, it seems that the
command creates the obligation, and the ca
pacity to perceive and obey creates the obli
gation to obey law. How can his readers
harmonize these contradictory things?
As we have seen, capacity to perceive and
obey law does not create the obligation to
obey. Nor is it true that the command of
itself creates an obligation to obey; the utmost
that the command can do is to direct, authori
tatively, how a previously existing obligation
shall be discharged— e. g., the prohibitory
command to Adam did not of itself create
the obligation to obedience, but simply made
known to him how God would have him dis
charge a previously existing obligation. Of
course not to obey the command will be a
violation of that obligation, and will of neces
sity involve the offender in conscious guilt or

g6 Atonement Reviewed.
remorse. But if the command does not rest
upon a prior obligation, then disobedience to
it will involve no such conscious guilt, no
sense of self-degradation or remorse; and what
evils may result will of necessity be physical
and not moral — calamities, and not the penal
ties of moral la.w.
The prohibition, therefore, under which
Adam was placed rested for its authority
upon a prior obligation or law written upon the
heart by the Creator, immutably connecting
good with obedience and moral evil with dis
obedience; and the words "in the day thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" are sim
ply a revelation of the consequence of a viola
tion of this obligation or subjective law.
(5) The rational presumption is that there
was nothing in the forbidden fruit itself capa
ble of producing spiritual death (which was
the death intended), and nothing in the out
ward act of eating; but in the willful disobe
dience in eating, or rather in the purpose to
eat it, in disregard of divine authority, did the
sin consist.
The prohibition, then, of itself was of no
consequence, except as a practical and sensi
ble test of love and obedience to God; very
much as God's commmand to Abraham to
sacrifice his son Isaac — a test of obedience or

Law in Commandment. 57
self-denying love. But the command not to
eat of this particular tree no more implies that
Adam did not have an internal sense of obliga
tion to God than does the command to Abra
ham imply that he had no previous knowledge
of God; or both commands imply a knowl
edge of the will of God prior to the commands
and independent of them. The act of eating
the forbidden fruit was simply an outward
and sensible manifestation of logically prior
and internal lawlessness in opposition to sub
jective" law. Further proof of this fact will be
elsewhere given.
Mr. Armour says (p. 71): "All beings hav
ing law within them, or in the constitution of
their nature, were safe — safe because not ex
alted." Of course the reference is to animals.
Safe from what? Of course they are safe from
moral evil. Are they safe from physical evil?
Instinct or concreated law is sufficient for the
general purposes of their being; but it is by
no means an infallible preventive against evil —
suffering, death, etc.
Does Mr. Armour know that law written
on the heart of a rational creature would be an
infallible guaranty against moral evil? He as
sumes this, and makes it an argument against
subjective moral law. Is this reasoning, or
sheer postulation?

58 Atonement Reviewed.
Again (pp. 72, 73): "The philosophy (?) which
places men, in this respect, in the same rank
with animals, is beastly and horrible 
The buffalo on the plains are law to them
selves — their nature, their appetites, their pro
pensities, .... determine every thing."
Remarks. — (1) God, it is conceded, is a
law unto himself, and the buffalo unto himself,
and man is intermediate between them. Ii
subjective law in men is "beastly and horri
ble," why is it not so in the Creator, whose
image they bear?
(2) Is it necessarily so that " appetites and
propensities determine every thing " in all be
ings possessed of subjective law?
Does subjective law necessarily exclude rea
son and conscience as determining factors in
action? Our author evidently thinks so. Does
he, by his philosophy, honor or dishonor his
Creator? Even the abandoned sensualist does
not make his "appetites and propensities the
rule of his action," but his intellect furnishes
him the rule by which he seeks their gratifi
cation. Our author, in further opposing subjective
law, quotes Rom. xv. 3 : " Even Christ pleased
npt himself," and says, "This is the strongest

Law in Commandment. 59
form of asserting that no subject of law may
please self."
Remarks. — Mr. Armour here confounds
sensibility and will. Certainly, Christ denied
himself personal ease and temporary pleasure
for the sake of others, as all Christians are
required to do. But this no more proves self-
denial incompatible with subjective than it
is with objective law; for as we have seen
" appetites and propensities " form the rule of
action with no rational beings. The motive
to action is not the rule of action.
Having briefly noticed Mr. Armour's prin
cipal argument against law written upon the
heart, and in support of law in commandment
only, I wish to say a few things in reference
to subjective law.
1. I have no sympathy with those who as
sert an incongruity between subjective and
objective law — law written upon the heart,
and law in commandment; or that the former
excludes either the possibility, or the utility,
or (for the attainment of the highest excellency)
the necessity of revealed law.
2. I have no sympathy with those who as
sert subjective law to be sufficient to enable
ever}' man in his fallen state clearly to dis
criminate between right and wrong in the

60 Atonement Reviewed.
concrete, or as the eye discriminates between
colors, or the ear between sounds.
We intuitively know that every effect must
have a cause, but we do not intuitively know
the cause of every effect. These are given
only by the tuitive reason. In like manner
we intuitively know that our motives of action
are right or wrong, but we do not intuitively
know what acts accord with the divine will.
This we learn from the word of God and the
tuitive judgment.
3. If moral law is purely and exclusively ob
jective and mandatory, like civil or human law,
then of necessity its rewards and penalties are
purely and exclusively objective, and do not
affect the internal or moral states of the mind
at all; and there seems to be no more reason
for calling such law moral than for calling the
laws of the State moral. Mandatory law is
properly moral only so far as it meets a re
sponse in the human conscience. Civil law
only so far as it meets this response in human
nature is obeyed from a sense of moral obliga
tion. Other civil laws that are not supported
by such moral convictions, or are purely and
exclusively mandatory, are obeyed — if obe}'ed
at all — purely from motives of fear, honor, or
policy. If these statements are true, our au
thor's theorv can not be true.

Law in Commandment. 6i
4. The consequences or penalties of a vio
lation of law exclusively in commandment can
not be transmitted by heredity.
The consequences of the violation of sub
jective law alone may be transmitted by pa
rent to progeny. Adam transmitted his cor
rupted moral nature to his posterity, just as he
transmitted his animal, intellectual, and aesthet-
ical nature. Permanently to corrupt his moral
nature (so that the corrupted man is in the
Bible called " the natural man "), and to trans
mit that depraved nature through all time was
impossible, except on the presupposition that
in eating the forbidden fruit he did actually
violate subjective moral law. The penal con
sequences in their civil aspects visited upon
thieves, murderers, etc., are not transmitted to
their children. The thievish or murderous
nature may be propagated, but to say that the
punishment of these lawless acts is transmissi
ble would be to talk nonsense.
But the consequences of Adam's sin come
on all his children. Why this difference?
Manifestly for the simple reason that the thief
violates law in commandment. But Adam
violated law written upon his heart.
The actual effects of the first human sin
upon the human race practically demonstrate
the fallacv of our author's theory.

62 Atonement Reviewed.
Possibly Mr. Armour might say that this
argument is not conclusive; but that God
brought the corruption of Adam upon his pos
terity by a sovereign judicial act, and not by
natural heredity. To this it is sufficient here
to say that this method of accounting for uni
versal depravity is absurd, for the law of he
redity is a product of a sovereign divine act,
and it is incredible that God should by one
sovereign act set aside a law which he by an
other sovereign act has established.
This judicial theory moreover requires the
supposition of a perpetual miracle, which con
verts the natural into the supernatural. It
also violates the law of parsimony; for if the
laws of heredity are sufficient for the trans
mission of the first man's animal and intellect
ual nature, it is unreasonable to suppose them
incapable of transmitting his moral nature.
The judicial theory is likewise incapable of
scientific defense, and its natural tendency is
to draw into infidelity those who happen to
believe that a rational Creator would not im
pose upon rational creatures a religion which
contradicts the very rationality with which he
has endowed them.
God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon
the children. This is certainly done through the
laws of heredity, and is capable of scientific

Law in Commandment. 63
defense. But to say that God visits iniquities
through law in commandment seems little less
than a burlesque on law.
5. Science and the Bible are in full accord
in affirming the existence of subjective moral
law as an essential characteristic of human
nature. Paul is the metaphysician of the
New Testament. He says (Rom. ii. 12-15):
"For as many as have sinned without law
shall also perish without law: and as many as
have sinned under law shall be judged by law;
for not the hearers of a law are just before
God, but the doers of a law shall be justi
fied: for when Gentiles, which have no law,
do by nature the things of the law, these, hav
ing no law are a law unto themselves; in that
they shew the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience bearing witness
therewith, and their thoughts one with anoth
er accusing or else excusing them." This is
so plain that comment can scarcely make it
plainer. (1) Paul here affirms the existence of the
revealed or written law, or law in command
ment; and also a law written in the hearts of
the Gentiles. This, of course is the subjective
or unwritten law. If this law is by nature
written in the hearts of the Gentiles, then it is

t>\ Atonement Reviewed.
of course a common characteristic, or com
mon possession of mankind.
(2) Men having this law, and not the law in
commandment, deal with it just as men deal
with the written law — that is, it is an object of
thought, study, inquiry, conscience; also has
its appropriate functions as a witness bearer
for or against them, according to the fidelity
or infidelity of the will to the convictions of
the judgment. This is the identical psycho
logical process common to those who have
the written law. The latter is simply the
voice of God from without interpreting the
voice of God from within. Had sin never
spread its dark shades over this inner solar
light, the outer light would be less imperative
ly required, though possibly would have been
always necessary to man in some form.
(3) This subjective law is of such conse
quence and of such authority as to constitute
a distinct rule of moral administration, and of
independent judgment.
" For as many as has have sinned without
law shall also perish without law, and as many
as have sinned under law shall be judged
by law." In this verse (12) we are plainly
taught that those that have not the objective
law in commandment may sin; sin is a trans
gression of the law; what law do they trans-

Law in Commandment. 65
gressr Not the law in commandment, for
they have no such law. Then it is of necessi
ty this subjective law written in the heart.
This contradicts Mr. Armour's philosophy.
Again, those who have no law in command
ment may perish — that is, suffer the penalty
of the law. But how is it possible to suffer
the penalty of the law, unless the law has
been broken? But how is it possible for those
who never heard of the law in commandment
to break any moral law if there is no such
thing as subjective law? Paul's facts and
our author's philosophy seem to be in hopeless
conflict. 6. We have in part the same truth taught
in Rom. v. 13, 14: "For until the law, sin was
in the world: but sin is not imputed when
there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned
from Adam until Moses, even over them that
had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's
transgression, who is a figure of him that
was to come."
In this text a number of facts bearing di
rectly on the question of subjective law are
clearly stated:
(1) That from Adam till Moses there was
no law in commandment in the world.
(2) That sin nevertheless was in the world
all this while from Adam till Moses. Of what
5

66 Atonement Reviewed.
law was sin then a transgression? There was
no law in commandment; and objective and
subjective are the only forms of law possible
to men. It is infallibly certain that subjective
law did exist; otherwise sin could not have
existed at all.
(3) That sin is not imputed when there is
no written law.
The exact meaning of the word impute in this
text is of importance. The verb allogeo is
not the verb generally translated impute. It
is used but twice in the New Testament, herq
and in Philemon xviii. 5. It can not mean in
this place that sin did not actually exist as sin,
for this would contradict the text; nor can it
mean that it was not punishable, for the peo
ple actually suffered death, which is the pen
alty. It must mean, then, that sin is not
known, or recognized, or apprehended as sin;
or in its true character when there is no law
in commandment to define or characterize it.
The sinner is, of course, conscious of his
mental state, of his unrest, and of fearful ap
prehensions of evil; but is unable to under
stand the reason of all this abnormality in his
mental state. His condition is much like that
of a diseased man, who knows not the cause
or nature of his disease.
This view of the subject is favored or rather

Law in Commandment. 67
confirmed by Rom. iii. 20: " By the law is the
knowledge of sin." Rom. vii. 7: " Howbeit
I had not known sin, except through the law,
for I had not known coveting, except the law
had said, thou shalt not covet."
(4) That death reigned over all from Adam
till Moses, and death being the effect of sin
proves that all were sinners, as effect proves
cause. (5) That men living between Adam and
Moses did not sin after the likeness of Ad
am's transgression.
But what is the exact difference between
the sin of Adam and others till the giving of
the law? The answer to this question is easy
and unquestionable. Adam sinned against
law in commandment, which was also a trans
gression of subjective law. But his children,
prior to Moses, sinned against subjective law
only. (6) These facts prove the possibility of sins
of ignorance — that is, men may know that
they are under law, but not know what par
ticular things are permitted, and what forbid
den by the law — e. g., a man might be con
scious of covetousness, and yet not know that
covetousness is sin, except the law in com
mandment had said thou shalt not covet.

68 Atonement Reviewed.
The principle is true in regard to any other
particular sin.
(7) It is also proven by the facts that the
penalties of subjective law are just as inevita
ble as are the penalties of revealed law, or law
in commandment. Death reigned just as tru
ly from Adam until Moses without mandatory
law as it does subsequent to that period. In
this respect subjective moral law is strictly
analogous to subjective physical law. Every
body knows that good health depends upon
conformity to certain pre-established condi
tions; but we may not know exactly what
those conditions are, or what hygienic law
requires; we consequently may ignorantly, or
unintentionally, violate them, and thus destroy
health, or even life. Poison taken ignorantly
or unintentionally is as fatal as when taken
knowingly and intentionally. So of the viola
tions of subjective moral law.
(8) Subjective and objective law, Paul
teaches us, (Rom. ii. 13,) constitute different
rules of judgment: "For as many as have
sinned without (revealed) law shall perish
without (revealed) law, and as many as have
sinned under law shall be judged by law."
Whatever criminality attaches to the man
who, ignorantly or unintentionally, destroys his
life, attaches solely to his ignorance or care-

Law in Commandment. 69
lessness. Such a one is less criminal than he
who knowingly and intentionally destroys his
life. But the same act, whether intended or
unintended, is followed by the same conse
quences. So it is in regard to the violations
of subjective moral law and law in command
ment. The latter involves the greater crim
inality and the greater punishment. The pun
ishment in both cases is spiritual death. Hence
there are different degrees of spiritual death,
as there are different degrees of spiritual life;
even as there are different degrees of health
and vitality in those who conform more close
ly, and those who conform less closely, to
the laws of health. The facts stated by
Paul, and the logical conclusions that grow
necessarily out of them, seem to establish be
yond all controversy that the law of God is
written in the heart as an essential character
istic of human nature, and that Mr. Armour's
assumption is utterly at fault. Some of its nec
essary consequences are as follows:
1. It quite excludes the possibility of sins of
ignorance. He says men have the "capacity
of perceiving and obeying law when and in
what way soever made known unto them, and
this capacity creates the obligation to obey
law; they are not law unto themselves; they
have not the moral law revealed in the consti-

70 Atonement Reviewed.
tution of their nature. The law for all moral
beings is the will of God in commandment
made known unto them, and not an inward
principle." This is very explicit and clear.
The law is not an inward principle; it is
commandment made known. Thus, of course,
it is impossible to violate ignorantly a law made
known. But we know that the Bible fully
recognizes sins of ignorance; and that a large
part of the sins of humanity against both phys
ical and moral law consists of sins of igno
rance. 2. The theory excludes the possibility of sins
against self. But the Bible recognizes such
sins. The law in commandment was given
on two tables of stone — one specifying our
duties to God, and the other our duties to our
neighbor. No table was given specifying our
duties to ourselves. The reason is simply that
all duties to our neighbors are primarily duties
to God, and all duties to God are duties to
ourselves. Hence, all sin against God is also
and necessarily sin against ourselves. But this
manifestly could not be true, unless we have
the divine law written in the heart.
The feelings arising out of the violations of
"law wholly in commandment" are quite dis
tinguishable from those that arise out of the
violations of subjective law. The first is a sin

Law in Commandment. 71
against authority; the second, a sin against
self as well. The punishment of the former
is merely objective, that of the latter subject
ive. 3. In strict accord with the preceding, it
should be said that the peculiar feeling called
conscience is the psychological complement of
subjective law, and hence if there is no sub
jective moral law, there can be no such thing
as conscience. The penalties of mandatory
law are purely external; they come from with
out. They in no sense involve the conscience
unless subjective law is also violated.
All law in commandment, both human and
divine, that does not meet a response in sub
jective law, appeals to the fears of men, and
not to the conscience, as motives of obedi
ence. The horse, the ox, the dog, though a law
unto themselves, are to a degree capable of
law in commandment. But such law appeals
only to their fears as inducements to obedi
ence, and of course not in any sense to moral
feelings. The ox fears the lash, and therefore
obeys. Take from him the capacity of sensa
tion and he would defy all law in command
ment. The same would be true, I doubt not, of all
created intelligences but for this moral law

72 Atonement Reviewed.
written upon the neart. Conscience and con
created law are inseparable; but if we reject
subjective moral law, a true psychology re
quires us to reject the doctrine of conscience,
and substitute in its stead the feeling of servile
fear — the apprehension of evil from without.
All motives of action become motives of policy
or prudence, and no sin could be regarded as
a sin against self, or as an act of self-degrada
tion. There could be no cases of conscience.
No Judas could hang himself because of the
goadings of remorse. Men may die of fear
as may other animals. The feeling called
remorse, and the feeling called fear, are radi
cally distinct. This is sufficiently obvious to
all that are able to refer these different emo
tional states to their respective causes.
4. Law in commandment admits of object
ive rewards and punishments only. All the
consequences of obedience and disobedience
come from without, or proceed only from the
will of another, and in no sense from the dis
turbed harmony of the mind itself. Hence, all
moral retributions belong not to the sphere of
the natural, but of the supernatural, and the
administration of the moral world is a per
petual miracle. All human law is law in com
mandment, and its rewards and punishments
are objective, are delivered by the will of the

Law in Commandment. 73
law-giver, irrespective of the character of the
obedience or disobedience of the subject; or
the character of an offense is in no sense de
terminative of the character of the punish
ment. All this is not less preposterous than
it would be to say that sickness — disease of
every kind — comes upon us from the violations
of law in commandment.
Of course, Mr. Armour does not deny to
men a conscience. This he can not afford to
do; for no scheme of ethics or of theology
would be tolerated, if it should fail to recog
nize conscience in some form. Mr. Armour
really has much to say about conscience, but
the calamity is that he destroys the possibility
of a conscience proper, and appropriates the
term to something radically different.
5. According to Mr. Armour's philosophy
man is not with propriety called a moral be
ing; for it is in fact concreated moral law that
constitutes man properly a moral and relig
ious being.
Capacity to know, to feel, and to will of
course are indispensable prerequisites to moral
ity in the creature. But this capacity does not
of itself constitute a moral nature. Nor does
law in commandment make him a moral being
any more than it does the horse or dog. This
law written in the heart — this internal sense

74 Atonement Reviewed.
of Tightness and wrongness in our motives of
action — is the subjective ground of both mo
rality and religion, and without it both would
as inevitably die as would the animals if de
prived of their concreated instincts.
Hence it is, that just in so far as they hap
pen to repress this inner sense of obligation —
this internal solar light — do men become skep
tical as to morality and religion.
We also know that nations that have not
moral law in commandment have their codes
of morals and their forms of religion as truly
as those that have it. This shows the exist
ence of this subjective law as a common pos
session of all men. The universality of the
religious sentiment and of ideas of moral rec
titude can be accounted for on no other prin
ciple. Mr. Armour of course is not ignorant of
the fact that the Bible sharply discriminates
between law in commandment and law writ
ten in the heart; but the exigencies of his
theory — " substitution normal in law " — imper
atively requires him to obliterate this distinc
tion. This he does by the assumption that
moral law, " in what way soever made known,"
is law in commandment. This he may deem
very good strategy, but it is certainly very
bad philosophy. To confound things, in them-

Law in Commandment. 75
selves essentially distinct, is one of tne com
mon methods of errorists. No distinction
needs to be broader or clearer than that be
tween law made known by command and law
made known in nature, and to confound them
for strategic purposes is simply unpardonable.
If Mr. Armour can succeed in removing
men from the dominion of subjective law and
in putting them wholly under the dominion of
mandatory law, then he can bewilder his
readers with a brilliant display of the marvel
ous capabilities of law, and the wonderful
analogies and typical relations of human and
divine law. He then can, by the magic pow
er of substitution transport sin, and guilt, and
penal fire from one pole of the world to the
other, and insure to the guilty the reward
proper to the innocent, and to the innocent
the punishment proper to the guilty.
Mr. Armour objects to skeptics because
they deny both the necessity and the possibil
ity of objective law, and allege the sufficiency
of subjective law. In this he is manifestly
right. It is certainly true that subjective law
in itself is insufficient to men in their sinful
state for the attainment of the highest destiny.
But we should not, on this account, divest
them of the noblest concreated power of their
nature — their consciousness of moral distinc-

76 Atonement Reviewed.
tions, without which men are quite incapable
of mandatory law in such form as to bind the
conscience. But Mr. Armour errs scarcely
less fatally than the skeptic, when he rejects
subjective law and puts rational creatures
wholly under law in commandment. The
skeptic reduces religion to a sentiment, Mr.
Armour to an institution, having all its imper
atives, its motives in things external to the mind
itself — God is recognized as supreme over
nature, and not as supreme in nature — as the
executive of statute law, and not of concre
ated law.
I have no sympathy with Higher lawism;
nor with those who deny the necessity of
Revelation; but to deny subjective law is to
cut the heart out of Christianity, and out of
Christian ethics as well, and leave them mere
lifeless forms. Happily for humanity the
moral world is not constructed according to
our author's artificial method.

SECTION IV.

i. SUNDRY TOPICS BRIEFLY NOTICED.

M1

~R. ARMOUR makes some gratuitous
and perilous assertions concerning di
vine sovereignty.
He says (p. 26): "Divine sovereignty is to
be recognized in determining to save any
fallen ones, in determining who should be
saved," and much more to the same effect.
Remarks. — I suppose that all God's acts
are purely sovereign; but I should not choose
to dishonor him by putting him on parity with
fate, or by assuming that he can not be free
without utterly excluding all freedom fromthose
created in his own image. There is as much
sovereignty (and withal a higher order of
sovereignty) in creating men free as there
could be in creating them with a predeter
mined and inevitable destiny. Why can not
the Creator authorize men to choose between
good and evil, life and death, without surren
dering his sovereignty? Can our author show
(77)

78 Atonement Reviewed.
why or how God can not be sovereign without
determining who shall be saved or who shall
be lost? He repeatedly commands men to
choose life that they may live. Is he merely
mocking their helpless misery? I prefer not
to impute to my Maker such gratuitous cruel
ty. It is not difficult, through false notions
of sovereignty, to present distorted and un
worthy views of the divine character.
2. VOLUNTARY NECESSITY AND NECES
SITATED FREEDOM.
Mr. Armour says (p. 80): "Right action in
God is a necessity." This is cloudy. Does
he mean that God necessarily acts? If so, this
is fate, and God is its first victim. Or does
he mean that the act is free, but that it is nec
essarily right? If so, in what sense does he
intend the word right to be taken? in the
sense of morally good, or only pertinent or
proper? We know that all acts are only means
to an end, and as such have fitness or perti
nency, but of themselves have no moral qual
ity. Now, our author leaves us quite in dark
ness as to whether he means that action itself
in God is a necessity; or whether divine action
is necessarily morally good, or whether it is
only necessarily pertinent as a means to an
end.

Sundry Topics Briefly Noticed. 79
What follows does not relieve, but rather
intensifies the darkness. He continues: "Yet
since this necessity arises from the infinitude
of his perfections, it is, in the fullest sense,
voluntary and praiseworthy."
This is marvelous! Necessity " in the fullest
sense voluntary ! " Necessity " in the fullest
sense praiseworthy!" A voluntary necessi
ty! Could skepticism assert any thing more
inconsistent with the doctrine of moral dis
tinctions or rational religion? But while our
author is pleased to put the Creator under a
voluntary necessity, he chooses to allow to
rational creatures freedom of a different kind.
He says: "Right action in the case of any
mere creature ... in order to be praise
worthy must be action the opposite of which
was possible." Here he asserts, and seems to
mean, that men have freedom with the power
of contrary choice. Philosophers generally
consider freedom with an alternative, the high
est form of freedom possible. But our author
says "necessity in God is, in the fullest sense,
voluntary" — in his estimation freedom, with
the power of contrary choice, is only a lower,
perhaps the lowest, form of freedom. Why
he makes this distinction, contrary to the gen
eral method of necessitarians, he does not
choose to inform us.

80 Atonement Reviewed.
But after all, this inferior freedom with an
alternative can not be of much value. It can
not, according to our author's philosoph}', free
the world from a remorseless despotism, for
if all things — entities and events — are neces
sarily as they are, because God is necessarily
as he is; or if all things are irreversibly fixed
from eternity by the necessary nature of God,
then all freedom in the Creator and in the
creature is a tantalizing illusion.
If the Creator acts from a necessity from
within himself, and his necessitated volitions
have determined the destiny of all men and
things, and freedom of every form is a mere
illusion, then the very conception of freedom
is a calamity — that is, if illusions are calam
ities. But are not necessity and freedom with an
alternative contradictory things? Our author
thinks not; he affirms a voluntary necessity in
the Creator, and a necessitated freedom in the
creature — that is, a freedom with an alterna
tive, but which is in harmony with a predes
tined end. To ordinary minds these things
seem to be the plainest contradictions, but to
the astute mind of our author they seem to be
in the utmost harmony. According to his
philosophy of the creature-will, the elect,
having the power of contrary choice, might

Sundry Topics Briefly Noticed. 8l
choose the means which condition eternal
death, and be lost; or the reprobate might
choose the means which condition eternal life,
and be saved. But according to his theology
such things are impossible, because the divine
nature, or a necessitated decree, has settled
the destiny of all. Would it not be well for
Mr. Armour to revise either his philosophy or
his theology, and put them in some sort of
decent harmony?
3. SOME DOUBTFUL THINGS ABOUT
CONFIRMATION.
Our author says (p. 81): "Confirmation,
whether of men or of angels, is due to Christ
alone, to Christ the one only servant of God,
whose obedience is assured by his divine
nature. Christ, the divine servant of God, is
pledged for and insures the standing of all
holy creatures."
Remarks.-^ 1) If Mr. Armour fails to put
the moral world in harmony with his ideal, it
will not be for the want of courage, or some
thing more censurable.
Parenthetically — What authority has our
author to call Christ the divine servant of
God? As divine, he was not a servant of God,
but God himself. How can God be a servant
of God? 6

82 Atonement Reviewed.
(2) How does our author know that the
confirmation of the "angels is due to Christ
alone," or that Christ " is pledged for and in
sures" their standing? He speaks as one
having authority. He may be right; or he
may be only "wise above what is written."
If Christ "is pledged for and insures the
standing of all holy creatures," how happened
any of them to fall? According to Mr. Ar
mour's creed, were not all — Adam and all
the angels — originally holy? If Christ insures
their standing, how came any such to fall?
Alas! Armourism foreordained the fall of a
part of them. This was, of course, " for wise
and holy ends." For such Christ was not a
surety; hence they could not keep their first
estate. Our author should replace the word
"all" with the word some, or else take the
word holy in a sense adverse to his creed.
(3) But consistency is not always one of
Mr. Armour's jewels. He elsewhere informs
us that Christ could not become a mediator
for men without taking to himself man's nat
ure. But we are expressly told (Heb. ii. 14)
that he did not take the nature of angels. How,
then, could he become their surety?
Again, how can our author reconcile the
power of contrary choice with the impossi
bility of disobedience? May not the power of

Sundry Topics Briefly Noticed. 83
contrary choice be destroyed by habits volun
tarily formed ? "Can the Ethiopian change his
skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also
do good that are accustomed to do evil." Have
the fallen angels the power of contrary choice?
If habitual disobedience has confirmed them
in a state of enmity against God, why may npt
the unfallen angels be confirmed in their love
to God by persistent and uniform obedience?
If angels are created with no predisposition to
disobedience, why may they not be truly con
firmed in that state by the force of habit?
Again, how does Christ insure the standing
of the holy angels? Does he compel them to
love God for themselves? If so, what becomes
of the power of contrary choice ? Or does he
love God for them? As a man, he confessedly
can love God only for himself. Hence, if he
loves or obeys, as God, then God's love to God,
or obedience to himself, insures the standing of
the holy angels. This is darkness itself. The
truth is, Mr. Armour has indulged his propen-
sion for bold, ill-considered utterances on this
subject which admit of no rational compre
hension; utterances far more likely to impress
the timid reader with the awe that comes
from mystery than to enlighten or satisfy the
thoughtful.

SECTION V.

THE WILL.
MR. ARMOUR, in his chapter on the
will, says some things that are true,
some things equivocal, some doubtful, and
many that are not true.
He says (p. 88): " The will is self-assert
ing, seeks supremacy, aspires to be above all.
This is an inherent and essential element in
the nature of will; and if in any instance it
is brought to acquiesce in, accept and delight
in, a state of subjection, or subordination to
the will of another, it is always for good and
sufficient reasons duly considered, and not
because it sought or desired a subordinate
place? The underscoring is his, and indicates the
high importance that he attaches to his ex
planation of the will.
I do not propose to controvert his psycholo
gy; for I am not able to gather it from his
book — further than to learn that it is some
sort of necessitated freedom — freedom with
(84)

The Will. 85
an alternative which nevertheless reaches a
predetermined end.
The quotation just given sufficiently indi
cates our author's confused notions of the will.
If he had made his assertions of the whole
man, instead of a particular faculty, he would
have been less liable to criticism; for it is the
man that is self-asserting, that seeks suprema
cy, that aspires to be above all. The will may
be said to accept or acquiesce, but it is not a
function of will, but of the sensibility, to de
light in any thing. The will does not con
sider nor desire, as our author alleges. He
seems to agree with no known theory of the
will; nor has he given us any intelligible theo
ry of his own. He denies that rational creat
ures could be endowed with free will and yet
be incapable of sinning. In this he dissents
from Augustine, Anselm, and many other dis
tinguished authors. In this respect he evi
dently Is right. He also denies that such a
state is attainable in this world or another.
He does not, with Hodge, discriminate be
tween freedom and ability. With him the
loss of ability to sin would be the loss of free
dom. Still, Christ, in some inexplicable way,
"insures the standing of all holy creatures."
Yet they are free. He seems to teach that all
such creatures are free, and not free; can sin,

86 Atonement Reviewed.
and can not sin; their disobedience "ever
naturally possible, and only impossible because
of the power, grace and faithfulness of Christ
who stands for them." (p. 81.)
I have now noticed a few of the many errors
of the first part of Mr. Armour's book. Those
noticed will give the reader a general idea of
the character of this part of the work. The
first part of the book is intended as a prepara
tive to the discussion of his principal theme —
the atonement. The foundation, as we have
seen, is not all of solid marble; much of it is of
rotten sand-stone. The whole is no stronger
than its weakest part. The superstructure is
ho stronger than its foundation. To this I
propose now to direct attention. I do not
propose to follow Mr. Armour's order in
the discussion of the several topics, but will
confine my remarks to the fundamental doc
trine of his atonement and its collateral sub
jects in what seems to me to be the most nat
ural order, and will leave minor points to take
care of themselves.

SECTION VI.

SIN STRICTLY A DEBT.
MR. ARMOUR considers sin strictly a
debt, and nothing more nor less. The
establishment of this position he seems to
deem of vital interest to his theory of atone
ment, and puts forth his characteristic logic
in its support.
He says (p. 136): "In the Lord's prayer we
read, ' Forgive us our debts? Why this word
if sin be not debt? That this is deeper debt
than the wealth of this world can pay — debt
of another kind, so that material wealth can
pay no part of it — is most true; but because it
is debt so great shall we say it is not debt at
all? "
His theory is that sin is, in its nature, strict
ly debt, and, as such, is transferable from one
party to another, and may be punished in a
substitute as a debt may be collected from a
surety. He, however, is not always consist
ent with himself.
He says (pp. 135-6): "In the last analysis
sin and debt agree; not merely in the sense
that in the one case as in the other there is ob-
(37)

88 Atonement Reviewed.
ligation to the law, but that the obligation in
the one case as in the other arises from the
withholding from the law what was due."
Remarks. — (i) Mr. Armour in. the first
quotation asserts the identity of sin and debt;
in the second he asserts their agreement or
similarity. That there are some points of
similarity between sin and debt, I suppose no
one would care to deny. Every particle of mat
ter has something common to every other par
ticle of matter; hence, some agreement or
analogy between them — so all mental states
and acts. But agreement in some particular
or analogy is not sameness. Agreement, sim
ilarity, etc., imply diversity, not sameness.
Is sin debt? or is it in some conceivable re
spect similar to debt? According to our
author it is both, which is somewhat difficult
to comprehend.
(2) Our author specifies two points of agree
ment between sin and debt. First, he says
there is in both an obligation to law. Suppose
this to be granted, it no more proves them to
be identical than the common property of
gravity proves iron and feathers to be iden
tical; or the act of volition, common to obe
dience and disobedience, proves them to be
identical.

Sin Strictly a Debt. 89
Parenthetically — "Sin and debt are obliga
tion to law?" This savors of realism. All
obligations lie between persons, and not be
tween persons and things. If sin is a debt
the obligor, as well as the obligee, is a person
— not something which we may happen to
call law.
(3) The second point of agreement between
sin and debt, according to our author, is " that
the obligation in one case, as in the other,
arises from withholding from the law what
was due." If this statement was true it
would prove nothing to the point; or would
prove only a single point of agreement be
tween sin and debt, but not their identity.
But the statement, interpreted in the light
of its own terms, is an absurdity. For no act
can by possibility create the obligation which
it violates. This would be to say that the fail
ure to pay a debt creates the obligation to
pay, and this is exactly what our author's
words teach. "Withholding what was due"
violates a prior obligation, but creates none
whatever. What it does create is liability to
evil consequences. But Mr. Armour under
stands himself. What he is determined to do
at all peril is to establish the identity of sin
and debt, and also to make it appear that to
suffer the penalty of law is to discharge an

go Atonement Reviewed.
obligation to the penal side of law. To ac
complish this important point, he, with strat
egic intent, uses the word obligation where
decency and common usage required him to
use the word liability or its equivalent.
No one, it is presumed, is so blind as not to
see that to suffer the consequences of not
paying a debt when due, is not to pay the debt;
and so of sin, if it is a debt, to suffer the pun
ishment of it is not to pay the debt itself. Let
this simple, but immensely significant fact not
be forgotten in the following discussion.
He says (p. 136): "Both the sinner and the
debtor are under condemnation of law." In
another place he denies that an obligation to
pay in the future is debt at all — that is, if A
borrowed money from B, with the promise to
pay in twelve months, A is not debtor to B
until the note matures. According to this
philosophy, a man can never be a debtor with
out being a criminal.
But usage, and common sense as well, re
gards A as a debtor to B from the hour the
money changed hands. Our author is a shrewd
strategist. He clearly saw that to admit A
to be a debtor before the maturity of his note,
would be to admit a radical difference between
sin and debt — that is, a man may be a debtor
without being a criminal, but can not be a sin-

Sin Strictly a Debt. 91
ner without being a criminal. Mr. Armour's
bold assertion that " both the sinner and the
debtor are under condemnation of law," turns
out to be not true.
(4) Debt is properly an obligation arising
out of a consideration. It is not an obligation
to law as such, but to a person, or community
of persons, and the parties concerned have
absolute power over it, as to when or how it
shall be paid, or whether it shall be paid at all.
The law has nothing to do with it, unless in
voked to prevent one party from wronging
another. Can our author say all this of sin?
If he can not, why attempt to identify things
so radically different?
(5) His philosophy is often in conflict with
one Saul of Tarsus. If debt, like sin, is neces
sarily condemnation of law, then, of course, all
debtors are in a state of condemnation — are
suffering the penalties of the law. But Paul
declared himself to be " a debtor both to the
Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and
to the unwise." Hence, according to our au
thor, Paul was under condemnation of law,
and was, when he wrote, actually suffering the
penalty of the law; for the transgression and
penalties of moral law are as inseparable as
cause and effect. Paul uses the word debtor
in the sense of obligation, to do what is good

92 Atonement Reviewed.
or right. Mr. Armour uses it, as we have
seen, in the sense of liability — or, as he im
properly calls it, "obligation — to punishment."
We can choose between them.
(6) " In the last analysis sin and debt agree."
Mr. Armour affirms — Paul denies. I concur
with the latter, and affirm that sin in the last
analysis is lawlessness — enmity to God, carnal-
mindedness, and a state described as spiritual
death. Debt is not necessarily so. It implies
no alienation, no enmity, no motive or desire
to injure the creditor, is not necessarily a
breach of good morals, implies no disregard
to the rights of others, or criminal intention.
It often results from providential occurrences,
from misfortune, often from benevolent and
pious purposes.
Certainly one man may intentionally de
fraud another; but then he becomes more
than a debtor — a criminal, a sinner in fact.
Debt, unaccompanied with bad intention,
brings no moral retribution upon the debtor.
If it results from unavoidable circumstances it
may bring regret, but not remorse; for it is a
calamity, not a crime.
If it results from imprudence — its most
fruitful source — it is followed with the ordina
ry penalties of imprudence, and not with the
sting of conscious guilt. Whatever temporal

Sin Strictly a Debt. 93
evils may arise from it, the soul's salvation is
not imperiled by it. Can Mr. Armour say
these things of sin? If he can not, why does
he strategetically assert the identity of sin and
debt? (7) Again, it is not improper to say that
debt is not necessarily an offense to the cred
itor, even if it should never be paid. The
creditor is often the best friend to the debtor
— loves him most, has the utmost faith in him,
and permits him to increase his indebtedness
with little, perhaps no, prospect of ever re
ceiving payment. Is this true of sin? Is it
not necessarily offensive to God — the abomina
ble thing that he hates? offensive and hateful,
not because it personally injures him, but be
cause it is a willful abuse of the beneficent
and infinitely wise provisions he has gracious
ly made for the happiness of his rational
creatures. It is as truly a curse to the creat
ure as it is an offense to the Creator; for ev
ery sin against God is a sin against the trans
gressor himself, being an infraction of the
conditions upon which his good necessarily
depends. Sin is to the sinner himself what
the self-injected poison of the viper, which,
in its delirium of rage, thrusts its fangs into its
own flesh and dies of its own venom. Can all
this be said of debt? If not, why attempt to

94 Atonement Reviewed.
identify them? To do this is to maximize
debt and minimize sin — to convert the mole
hill into a mountain, and the mountain into a
mole-hill. (8) But Mr. Armour makes much ado
over the word "debts" in the Lord's prayer.
He, however, is presumed to know that the
original, opheilemata, is used both of debts and
also of sins or trespasses; that the word, as
used in Matt. vi. 12, is explained in verse 15
by the word paraptomata, trespasses; that
Luke, in the prayer itself, uses the word sins,
hamartia, instead of the word debts; that
Mark, in the parallel text, uses trespasses pa
raptomata. Mr. Armour is also presumed to know that
neither paraptoma nor hamartia is ever
translated debt, but that opheilema is used in
the sense of sin. To build up a mammoth
theory on so shallow a foundation is certainly
extremely perilous to truth. But this is the
only show of Bible authority our author has
for calling sin a debt. But the Bible gives no
authority for the assumption that sin is debt in
any proper sense, or in such sense that it may
be transferred from one person to another, as
human obligations may be transferred by con
sent of parties.

SECTION VII.

'< SUBSTITUTION NORMAL IN LAW."
SUCH is the heading of Mr. Armour's third
chapter on atonement. Very properly re
jecting the dream that sinful men can make
atonement for themselves, he says (p. 127):
" For if atonement by the sinner be a manifest
impossibility, atonement, perfect atonementyb^
the sinner is also an impossibility, unless sub
stitution be a normal provision of law, unless
law in its own nature provide for substitution
and for atonement thereby. But law, in its
whole range and extent, and in all the ways
in which it is made known to us, reveals won
drous provision for substitution."
Again (p. 128): "Law in its own nature
provides for, admits and is fully satisfied
with an adequate substitute?
Remarks. — (1) Our author assumes in the
first quotation that what he knows as to how
an atonement can be made is the sum of all
that can be known. With less arrogance, he
might have said that he could not see how
(95)

96 Atonement Reviewed.
atonement could be made without substitution.
Such a statement would have defied criticism.
(2) "Substitution normal in law" is the key
stone of the arch which is to bear the weight
of Mr. Armour's colossal superstructure. The
normality of substitution as a provision of law,
is the talismanic power by which the " Great
Atonement" is to be triumphantly and forever
freed from the humiliating reproach of being
the "Great Exception" to God's otherwise
uniform and orderly method of governing the
world. This marvelous capacity of law is to
place the doctrine of substitutionary atone
ment upon impregnable foundations, and ren
der it forever defensible before the bar of
reason on rigidly scientific principles.
But what if Mr. Armour should happen to
be mistaken; what if substitution should hap
pen not to be a normal provision of law? How
hopelessly sad this would be! For, according
to our author, who speaks with the confidence
of an infallible oracle, if substitution is not a
normal provision of law, then atonement is
simply impossible, and the hope of deliverance
from the terrible consequences of sin, through
a Mediator, is utterly incapable of realization.
For, as the reader will observe, our author
conditions salvation absolutely on atonement,
and the possibility of atonement upon the

Substitution Normal in Law. 97
normality of substitution in law — that is, no
salvation without atonement, and no atone
ment "unless substitution be a normal pro
vision of law." Mr. Armour seems to me
to base the possibility of salvation upon fear
fully precarious grounds, the new discovery
that substitution is a normal provision of law.
(3) All the great authors — philosophers and
theologians— have, as far as I know, uniform
ly admitted substitutionary atonement to be
unique, or abnormal, not according to nature
generally and an exception to the general
character, of moral law especially. Some
who hold firmly to substitutionary atonement
go so far as to admit that the doctrine is of
bad moral tendency. They therefore hold
that the Great Atonement is not an exception,
but "The Great Exception'''' to the divinely
established course of things.
Mr. Armour rebukes these grand old au
thors for making these concessions, which he
alleges (and rightly too) are " fatal to the doc
trine of atonement " by substitution. To escape
the logical consequences of these frank con
cessions, our author boldly announces the new
and startling doctrine that "substitution is a
normal provision of law."
This is certainly bold strategy; but whether,
in freeing substitution from one absurdity, he
7

98 Atonement Reviewed,
is not involved in a greater one remains to be
,seen. (4) " Substitution normal in law! " In what
law? All law, human and divine. He uses the
word law generically, and names no excep
tions. To affirm and re-affirm is easy. To
prove is a different thing. This our author
holdly attempts, but not in a very systematic
way, but in a way satisfactory to himself. But
does he, in fact, prove his postulate? If I may
anticipate the answer, as it will appear in the
sequel, I reply: If hypothetical analogies can
prove it, then he proves it. If the perversion
of a few Bible texts can prove it, then he
proves it.
Let us test the value of his leading argur
ments: 1. What does our author mean by substitu
tion? He says (p. 139): "As debt is imputed
to the surety or substitute, the discharge or
release is imputed to the debtor  We
have then in this transaction, so familiar to all,
a clear case of substitution, of imputation of
legal obligation, and imputation of legal right
eousness. In no creed in Christendom can
'substitution' and 'double imputation' be
found more clearly and distinctly set forth.
That the principles on which these (substitu
tions and imputations) are admitted are prin-

Substitution Normal in Law. 99
ciples which prevail in the entire range of law,
there is no reason to doubt. In the moral, as
in the natural, world the greatest as well as
the least results are attained on principles
common to both."
Our author gives us much more to the same
effect, but this is sufficiently explicit to give us
a distinct idea of what he means by substitu
tion. Two points deserve to be specially no
ticed. The first is that the essential charac
teristic of substitution is double imputation,
or that there can be no substitution without
"double imputation." As we shall subse
quently see, our author is not always scrupu
lously faithful to his own explanation of his
substitution. The second noteworthy point given in the
quotationis"thatthe principles of substitution,"
etc., prevail in the entire range of law, includ
ing natural and moral law as well as civil law.
(Mr. Armour uses the word natural in the
sense of physical, and as antithetical to moral
law. Is not the moral as truly natural as the
physical? Is not all concreated law, whether
physical or moral, properly natural law? The
Bible so teaches, and this is very good author
ity. Rom. ii. 12-15.)
Mr. Armour takes his principles from di
vine law, but his exemplifications and illustra-

ioo Atonement Reviewed.
tions from human law. This may be good
strategy, but is very suspicious logic. To as
sert a principle as common to all law, divine
and human, and then illustrate only by exam
ples taken from human law, savors more of
ingenuity than of ingenuousness. Pretermit
ting natural or divine law as impractical or
unproductive of suitable examples, he names
four cases in which human law admits of some
kind of substitution.
He says (pp. 129, 130): 1. "Work for the
public benefit, required by law of able and
qualified citizens within the limits of certain
age, may be performed by any substitute who
is free from like obligation, willing and able?
2. " By universal consent even military serv
ice, required for the defense of the country,
may be rendered by any substitute offered
who is himself free from the same obligation,
etc." 3. "Even in the case of crime, law, as un
derstood and administered by men in all lands,
provides that the penalty may be met by a
substitute, in all cases in which the penalty
prescribed is such that a substitute may meet
it consistently with the obligations he is al
ready under."
4. "So also in the case of debt, which is
obligation unto law, a substitute is always ad-

Substitution Normal in Law. ioi
mitted. A surety, who is always a true and
proper substitute, when he discharges the
obligation does ' ipso facto ' release the debtor,
and fully satisfy law. In each of the above
four classes of instances adduced, there is un
deniable substitution."
Remarks. — (i) In order to prove substitu
tion normal in divine law, Mr. Armour pre
sents four classes of substitution (so called) in
the sphere of human law. Remarkable logic!
Suppose all he says, or could possibly say, of
such cases to be true, what force has it on the
case in hand? Does it follow because my
neighbor can discharge a civil obligation in
my place that he therefore can discharge a
moral obligation for me? Because he can
work the streets in my place, does it follow
that he can eat or sleep in my place? or love
God or my neighbor in my place? Is it normal,
or even possible, for him to do such things?
(2) Human law creates no obligations. It
presupposes obligations arising outside of it
self, and indicates in what manner these prior
obligations shall be discharged. The fact that
it in some trivial cases, such as working streets
and military service, admits of some sort of
substitution, is rather proof of abnormality —
is a proof of the imperfection of human law-

102 Atonement Reviewed.
makers, and of the inadequacy of human laws
to secure exact justice among men. In allow
ing any form of substitution it becomes ab
normal, and in forcing any uniform rule it is
often unjust, because no human legislation can
adjust civil duties in exact accordance with
human ability.
The best of human laws are only proxi
mately just. Of course all such substitutions
as are admissible by such laws, are abnormal,
because only proximately just or equal, or do
not have their requirements in exact accord
with ability, every thing considered.
There possibly never was, and never will
be, a case of substitution in the lowest sphere
of laws which did not, or will not, involve
more or less of injustice to one or the other
party, or to some one directly or indirectly
connected with them.
So of all cases of security for debt — more
or less of injustice, in some form, results to
some person sooner or later. Nothing that
involves injustice can be properly called nor
mal. Normal injustice! All substitution in
human law involves injustice, and injustice is
abnormality itself. Divine law alone is rigidly
just — is in exact accord with ability, all things
taken into the account, as no human law can

Substitution Normal in Law. 103
be; and for this reason divine law utterly ex
cludes all substitution.
Two men may be hung from the same gal
lows; one maybe atrociously criminal, the other
less so; or one may be perfectly innocent; but
human law inflicts the same penalty upon
both. This is the best human law can do.
But divine law alone can meet out its awards
according to the real deserts of the parties.
How can substitution, with its double imputa
tion, in such cases possibly be just? and how
normal, if unjust?
(3) Why does Mr. Armour use the words
"substitute" and "surety" as synonyms?
They are not so etymologically, nor by good
usage, nor as law terms, nor so used in the
Bible. A substitute is one who actually as
sumes the place or obligations of another; a
surety is one who binds himself in case of the
failure of the principal. The substitute has
no recourse upon the principal. The surety
has such recourse if he has to fulfill the obli
gations of the principal, Mr. Armour's asser
tion to the contrary notwithstanding.
A man can not be a substitute and a surety
at the same time. One effectively excludes
the other. Mr. Armour, of course, knows
this; but the distinction brings trouble to his
theory, and therefore must be blotted out.

104 Atonement Reviewed.
(4) Mr. Armour's third and fourth classes
of substitution — for crime and debt — deserve
some special attention.
The third is a most crafty and cautiously
worded attempt to say something and nothing
at the same time. Will the reader turn to it
and study it a little?
The pretentious statement fairly destroys
itself by its own limitation. It suggests the
old ridiculous story of the snake that swal
lowed itself.
Mr. Armour might just as pertinently and
truthfully say that " law as understood and ad
ministered by men in all lands, provides " that
a man may steal his neighbor's horse "in all
cases in which the " theft may be committed
" consistently with the obligations he is
already under." Both statements are equally
true, and equally worthless as facts.
Mr. Armour knows that there are no " cases
in which the penalty prescribed is such that a
substitute may meet it consistently with the
obligations he is already under." Why then
deal in great swelling words that mean noth
ing, and yet tend to make the impression that
penal substitution is normal in law, or
is an actual provision of law, and belongs
to the common course of things? He, of
course, does not wish to deceive; yet what he

Substitution Normal in Law. 105
says tends to make false impressions upon the
thoughtless reader. I certainly hazard noth
ing when I say that no law, human or divine,
provides for penal substitution, but on the con*
trary all such law is utterly antagonistic to it,
and deems such a substitution a crime. This
is fairly implied by Mr. Armour's utter failure
to specify a single case of substitution under
criminal law. If a starving mother were to
steal a mutton-chop for herself and hungry
children, and she were sentenced to a day's
imprisonment as a punishment, and her father
were to propose to take her place, the offer
could not be legally accepted; or if accepted,
the prison-keeper would be liable to indict
ment for false imprisonment. Nor could a
thousand substitutes, if all imprisoned, release
the hungry woman.
So it is of murder and all other criminal of
fenses. No substitution is admissible foi the
simple but sufficient reason that to transfer the
penalty from the guilty principal to the inno
cent substitute is to commit a double wrong —
in excusing the guilty and in punishing the in
nocent. "Substitution a normal provision in
(criminal) law!"
But Mr. Armour might seek to justify his
broad assertions concerning criminal substitu
tion by saying that when a law breaker is as-

106 Atonement Reviewed.
sessed in a crime, a friend may pay the fine and
thus become a substitute for the criminal. This,
however, is no relief, for there is absolutely
no substitution in the case. The friend who
furnishes the money is in no sense a substitute
for the criminal, but a friend or benefactor
only. This will be more fully considered in
another place.
(5) Mr. Armour's fourth class of substitu
tions — debts — is that upon which he chiefly
relies for illustration and proof of his postu
late, "Substitution normal in law." He says
"debt is obligation unto law." As we have
seen, debt is obligation to a person, and not
to law as such. Whether law is intended to
be here taken in a realistic or in a personified
sense is not clear. Of course it is not taken
in its literal and proper sense, and gives us no
distinct idea.
He says "in the case of debt .... a sub
stitute is always admitted." That, however,
is wholly at the option of the creditor. The
debtor can not force the creditor to accept a
substitute against his will. To accept a sub
stitute is to release the principal. I have pre
viously noticed the difference between a sub
stitute and a surety, to which distinction our
author is blind, with or without a purpose.
He says " a surety who is always a true and

Substitution Normal in Law. 107
proper substitute, when he discharges the obli
gation does ' ipso facto'' release the debtor, and
fully satisfy law." Here we have a very plain
subject muddled by a vicious use of terms.
If we take the word surety in the sense of
substitute, as our author intends, then the
creditor or the law releases the debtor the in
stant he accepts the substitute, and not when
the money is paid. But if we take the word
surety in its proper sense, then the surety,
when he pays the debt, does not necessarily
" ipso facto release the debtor and fully satisfy
law." If A owes B ten dollars, and B owes C ten
dollars, by consent of parties C may accept A
as a substitute for B. This releases B, but if C
accept A only as a surety for B this does not re
lease B. But if A, as surety, pays the debt,
he does not by that act release B. On the
contrary, A cancels the obligation to C, and
becomes the legal substitute of C, and holds
the same legal claim against B originally held
against him by C. Of course there may be
some diversity in the provisions of statutory
law in relation to substitution and suretyship
as to money interests in different States. But
what I have said accords with the general
Custom, and is withal in strict accord with
common sense and common justice.

10S Atonement Reviewed.
These facts make fearful havoc with Mr. Ar
mour's whole theory of substitution and surety
ship, both in the sphere of commercial and
moral law.
Of this fact, Mr. Armour seems quite sensi
ble. This he evinces by an elaborate effort to
establish the preposterous idea that the pay
ment of debt by a surety releases the princi
pal from all legal obligation, and imposes upon
him only a debt of gratitude (which of course
may be repudiated with the utmost impunity).
He says (p. 140): "The rescued debtor
owes to him who became his surety a deep
and inextinguishable debt of gratitude. This
all right-minded persons at once recognize.
But this new obligation is not a legal obliga
tion. The most talented lawyer would not
assume to put it into legal form. No Legisla
ture has ever proposed to enact a law by
which a surety might afterward recover from
the original party for whom he acted. Surely
this has not been for want of deep conviction
of real obligation, but because even average
legislators were able to see that this obliga
tion, though sacred and weighty, was not a
legal obligation. They have therefore allowed
it to stand in all its weight and sacredness. It
is a true and striking type of our ob!i prions to
Christ, who delivered us from the infinite cieox

Substitution Normal in Law. 109
we were under. Even the befriended debtor
is not under law, b?it tinder grace, as are and
must be for evermore all the redeemed."
Remarks. — (I will not comment on the
rashness of these utterances. The reader can
readily satisfy himself, if he does not already
know, whether a surety, when he is forced to
pay the debt of his principal, is left utterly
without legal claim against the party on whose
account he has lost his money. But I have
something to say of his scheme of suretyship.)
1. It opens wide the door and presents a
strong temptation to fraud — downright rascal
ity. The love of money is said to be the root
of all evil. If I, by flattery, or duplicity, or
in any way, work myself into the good graces
or confidence of my neighbor, and induce him
to become my surety, I can put myself in a
condition to defy the law, and thus force my
innocent neighbor to pay the debt; or I might
collude with the creditor and persuade, or
even bribe, him to force payment from my
neighbor. I can conceive of no scheme of swindling
so sure of success, and at the same time so
exempt from punishment.
Legislatures, seeing this, have wisely ad
judged it proper to make sureties, who have

no Atonement Reviewed.
been forced to pay the debts of their princi
pals, the legal substitutes of the creditors.
Laws which should allow suretyship at all,
and yet make no provision for the protection
of sureties, would be an intolerable nuisance.
This is too plain to require elaboration.
2. But our author tells us that the debtor
whose debts have been paid by another owes
his surety a debt of gratitude. But suppose
the debtor should refuse to pay this debt, then
what? 3. But this new obligation is not a legal ob
ligation, we are told.
Mystery here! The obligation was orig
inally legal. The creditor, having received
his money of the surety, of course has no
claim upon the debtor. But how comes the
debtor, having paid nothing, to pass from un
der a legal obligation into a non-legal? The
debtor did justly owe the debt, has not paid it,
it has not been forgiven, he is presumably able
to pay it, and yet does not legally owe it!
But we are graveiy told that he owes, as a
sort of substitute, I suppose, for his legal
obligation, a debt of gratitude, which he can,
of course, fully pay or repudiate at pleasure,
and with utmost impunity. Is this accepta
tion, relaxation, or abrogation of law? Or, is
it, in fact, only an empty fiction? In the

Substitution Normal in Law. hi
meantime, let it be remembered that the sure
ty has lost his money, hopelessly, and, having
no legal claim, may never be able to collect a
particle of that substituted debt — debt of grat
itude which is said to be due.
In the light of this philosophy, it seems far
worse to be a surety than to be a debtor.
4. But we are told that "even average leg
islators were able to see that this {new) obli
gation, though sacred and weighty, was not a
legal obligation." Certainly, "even average
legislators " may be able to see that the obli
gation to gratitude can not be enforced by a
process of law or any other means; but they
can not very clearly see how a legal obligation
can, by the rascality of the debtor, be con
verted into a non-legal obligation, and his
surety left to suffer on his account, and with
out any possibility of redress.
5. All the interest connected with the dis
cussion of suretyship and substitution in com
mercial law, arises out of the fact that Mr.
Armour assumes these substitutions to be di
vinely preordained types and adumbrations
of the so-called substitutionary work of Christ
in behalf of the elect portion of humanity.
He accordingly informs us that this new obli
gation " is a true and striking type of our ob-

ii2 Atonement Reviewed.
ligation to Christ, who delivered us from the
infinite debt we were under."
I have somewhat against this preordained
scheme of typology: (i) As we have seen,
Mr. Armour mispresents the doctrines, both
of human substitution and of suretyship; or,
rather he constructs a scheme of human sub
stitution to fit his conception of what he calls
the " great substitutionary work of Christ."
That he misconceives the atonement of
Christ, assuming him to be a substitute for the
elect, both as to the preceptive and penal side
of the divine law, is, I think, capable of irre
futable proof. Constructing his types from a
false antitype, it is not at all strange that he
should give us a group of fictions instead of
facts; or that he. should misrepresent both
human and divine law.
(2) With all his marvelous, inventive
abilities, he signally fails to make his type fit
his antitype — notably in this, that Christ's
substitution compels, necessitates the gratitude
of all for whom he is a substitute. Christ ac
cordingly is somehow compensated for his
vicarious work, but the human substitute has no
such guaranty, but is liable to irreparable loss
for his kindness to his fellow-man. This we
may more fully see.
3. "Christ delivered us from the infinite

Substitution Normal in Law. 113
debt we were under." So it is said. Is there
no extravagance in this? Infinite debt! Is a
finite creature capable of an infinite obligation
or debt? or of an infinity of any thing?
Again, this infinite debt is not the joint debt
of humanity. This would involve the salva
tion of the reprobate; but the individual debt
of the elect. How many infinite debts is one
personality capable of paying? Christianity
would have more friends if its advocates had
less propension to exaggerate its doctrines.
Exaggeration may make the simplest truth in
credible. All the plausibility of Mr. Armour's
discussion of substitution in commercial law
arises out of his vicious use of terms, his as
sumption that substitution and suretyship are
in law identical. This fallacy corrected, his
analogical argument in favor of a substitution
ary atonement vanishes into thin air.
But suppose that it could be proved beyond
all doubt that substitution, in our author's
arbitrary sense of terms, is just, and normal
because just — normal in criminal law, in com
mercial law, in all human law — would it log
ically follow that Christ, as a substitute, " de
livered us (the elect) from the infinite debt we
were under?" or that he obeyed the precept
and " paid the penalty " of the divine law, in
the place of the elect? Such a conclusion

1 14 Atonement Reviewed.
from such premises would be a veritable non
sequitur, and would be accepted as satisfac
tory on no other subject. The argument in
its simplest and most plausible form would
be substantially as follows: Substitution is
normal in all human law.
But human laws are the divinely foreor
dained types of divine law. Therefore substi
tution is normal in the divine law, ordained for
the government of the moral world.
This, I think, is the gist of the whole argu
ment, founded on substitutions, so called, in
human law. What is it worth? It is scarce
ly necessary to say, what the reader can not
fail to see, that the major proposition is false;
that the minor proposition is an extravagant
assumption — a graceless figment, and the con
clusion a non sequitur.

SECTION VIII.

i. SUBSTITUTION PROVED TCLBE ABNOR
MAL BY THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF "ITS
CONDITIONS.
WE have seen that substitution, in Mr.
Armour's use of the term, is abnor
mal because essentially unjust in itself; be
cause it oppresses the innocent, and rewards
the guilty — very well illustrated by the case
of Christ and Barabbas — also because it of
fers a premium to fraud without liability to
punishment. I propose now to prove it abnormal, be
cause it is impossible in its conditions.
Our author, in order to strengthen his doc
trines of substitution and give to them an air
of universality, deems it proper to define the
qualifications of a substitute, which he im
properly identifies with a surety. These
qualifications, it may be seen, are not the pro
ductions of any law-making power, human or
divine. They are the pure elaborations of our
author's fertile brain. The process, though
ingenious, is not extremely difficult. ("5)

116 Atonement Reviewed.
He first assumes — scarcely attempts to
prove — that Christ is the legal substitute of
all the elect in such a s^nsethat their debts —
sins — are laid on him, and his non-indebtedness
is accounted to them. To give this proced
ure the appearance of a legitimate and normal
legal process, he makes Christ his model sub
stitute; and whatever he conceives to be an
essential characteristic of this model substi
tute he lays down as an indispensable prerequi
site in all substitution; and then sweeps, with
the exultation of one who has made a grand
discovery, to the conclusion that substitution
is a normal provision of all law, human and
divine. Let us now look briefly into these indispen
sable characteristics of substitution.
He does not educe his theory from well-as
certained and admitted facts, but constructs
his facts to fit his theory. He first forms his
conclusion, and then adroitly fabricates the
facts. Thus the assumption that Christ is the sub
stitute of all the elect is made by the marvel
ous ingenuity of our author to prove that sub
stitution, with double imputation, is a normal
provision of law.
Let us now glance briefly at these indispen
sable qualifications of a substitute. It is not

Substitution Abnormal. 117
necessary to notice them all in detail — a few
of the more prominent will answer my pur
pose. 1. He says (p. 129): " Substitution among
men is indeed confined to a narrow limit " —
(elsewhere, as we shall see, he makes it in
clude all benefactions) — "but this is wholly
owing to the fact that man is not qualified to be
a substitute for his fellow-man, except in those
cases in which the obligations he is required
to meet, whether fulfilling the precept or suf
fering the penalty, be such that he may assume,
meet, and discharge them in consistency with
his already existing obligations and duties."
Marvelous philosophy!
Substitution confined to a narrow limit! If
a normal provision of law — all law, I should
think it would have a very large range, not
only " among men," but through the whole
dominion of law — that it should be the most
common thing in the law-engirdled universe.
But why so limited a range? Well, it is
wholly owing to the fact that man can not be
himself and somebody else at the same time,
or be two equal personalities, one under obli
gation and the other free from obligation, and
capable of a voluntary alternation of positions.
In the trivial so-called substitutions possible
among men there is nothing more than a com-

nS Atonement Reviewed.
pensatory exchange of what are deemed
equivalent values — as in working roads, serv
ing in the army, etc., and this is possible only
in the sphere of human law, but is quite ex
cluded in moral law. In such cases one party
does not discharge the duty of another, but
does something in his own interest which does
not release the other party from an obligation,
but only from the necessity of discharging an
obligation in a particular way.
If A works the streets on B's account, B is
not released from legal obligation by that act,
but is legally bound for the value of the work.
A, therefore, is not a substitute for B, in Mr.
Armour's sense of the term, but is the legal
substitute of the State. Nor is this obligation
for the value of the work " a new obligation,"
but is the original obligation, which may be
discharged by money in lieu of work. Of
course it is not a legal obligation transmuted
into a debt of gratitude which may be paid or
repudiated at pleasure. Money and gratitude
are not legal equivalents, there being no law
for the transmutation of one into the other.
I heartily concur with our author that sub
stitution, in his sense of the word, has " a nar
row limit," and the reason is exceedingly plain.
Every man has his own duties — his own
place to fill. One man was not made to do

Substitution Abnormal 119
his own duty and the duty of others. Just as
well say that one sun was made to fill its own
place and the place of others. Such an ar
rangement cf nature would involve a dispro
portion between obligations and obligees;
would be an imputation upon the wisdom and
beneficence of the Creator; or, rather the
thing itself is inconceivable. If one man does
something as a gratuity for another, he does
it as a benefactor, and in no sense as his sub
stitute. In the sphere of moral law, substitu
tion, as we shall see, is certainly excluded,
and this is the kind of law with which this
discussion is concerned.
2. "Law (p. 28) in its own nature provides
for, admits, and is fully satisfied with an ad
equate substitute?
What law makes this provision? Mr. Ar
mour's answer would be, All law; yet no
proof or illustration is attempted. But is the
reader instructed, or, rather mystified, by the
bold and unqualified assertion? He may very
appropriately inquire whether Mr. Armour
means that law is satisfied with the obedience
of one person instead of that of another, or of
one hind of obedience instead of another. He
holds to both these views — that is, A may be
come the substitute of B, and may satisfy the
law by a service different in kind from what

120 Atonement Reviewed.
is required of B. This is double substitution;
substitution as to the subject, and as to the
requirement of the law. The latter our au
thor is pleased to call equivalent penalty, as
we shall see. What a flexible, accommodat
ing thing law must be?
But from this apparent absurdity Mr. Ar
mour escapes by the unobtrusive, but well-
nigh omnific word, "adequate'''' — "adequate
substitute." The eye thoughtfully fixed on this word,
we see at a glance that this underscored prop
osition can not but be true; but we also as
readily see that this word adequate reduces
his pretentious proposition to a nullity. For
it is self-evident that what is inadequate to
an end is nothing as to that end.
Mr. Armour's emphasized proposition then
reduces to this: "Law in its own nature pro
vides for, admits, and is fully satisfied with
any substitute that is provided for, admitted
and fully satisfies it."
Such empty propositions of course prove
nothing. They may perplex, but can not in
struct the reader.
We, I suppose, might admit that law in its
own nature provides for substitution, or any
thing else that is possible in its conditions. It
certainly is true that what is impossible in its

Substitution Abnormal. 121
conditions is impossible in itself. Mr. Armour
might say, with equal fidelity to truth, that
Archimedes could have turned the earth up
side down, if he could have furnished a place
for his fulcrum and whatever else was neces
sary to this end. Who would have temerity
enough to deny that the earth would be
thrown from its orbit if all the necesary con
ditions of such an achievement were at com
mand? So far as we know there may be no diffi
culty about law itself as it exists in Mr. Ar
mour's imagination, but the necessary condi
tions may be very impracticable things. What
is incumbent in our author is not to astonish,
and even awe his readers by high-sounding
periods that mean nothing but to prove that
law — all law, human and divine — admits of
substitution with double imputation. This posi
tion established, he will have proved that the
physical and moral world may be run on his
substitutionary principles, or rather that God
does not rule the world according to law or a
fixed order of antecedence and consequences
at all, but by lawless caprice.
The impossibility of procuring adequate sub
stitutes with twofold imputations is, if possi
ble, made more manifest by a brief examina
tion of what our author says of the indispensa-

122 Atonement Reviewed.
ble characteristics of a substitute. He teaches
(pp. 194-6) in various forms of expression that
the surety must be free from the obligation
which he assumes, must come under it freely,
must not injure himself permanently, must
survive, must not fail of full reward. To give
emphasis to these statements, he variously
affirms that the substitute "must survive,"
" must be in the end no loser," " must be fully
rewarded." Again (p. 196): "Every one of
these conditions above adduced may be found
meeting in an ordinary case of suretyship
among men, as well as in the great example of
which they are but types." . . . "A surety for
debt survives, is not in the long run a loser,
provided he were justifiable in becoming sure
ty. His reward is assured beyond doubt by
the Righteous Judge of all the earth."
Remarks. — 1. Mr. Armour is like a woman
who determines that her dress pattern shall
measure fifteen yards. She accordingly ad
justs the yard-stick to serve her purpose, and
then measures her cloth with it. Of course
she has fifteen yards.
But in doing this, has not Mr. Armour
proved substitution to be well-nigh or quite
abnormal to human law by making well-nigh

Substitution Abnormal. 123
or quite impossible its indispensable condi
tions? 2. " The substitute must survive." I know
what our author means in relation to the
Great Atoner; but I do not know what he
means in relation to sureties for debts —
whether the substitute must survive his sure
tyship financially, or live till the surety debt
is paid, or be restored to life in the resurrec
tion? Of course he means something in some
way analogous to the resurrection of Christ,
of which he deems it a divinely constituted
type. We know that thousands of men and their
families are reduced to poverty and wretched
ness by security; that thousands die in this
condition, and that many of them seem to die
premahirely because of these substitutionary
troubles. Or, perhaps Mr. Armour means to set aside
all such troubles by the application of his talis-
manic salvo, "provided he were justifiable in
becoming surety? (The underscoring is mine.)
This happy device will authorize Mr. Armour
to say any thing he may choose to say, or
rather any thing he could possibly say, about
the qualifications of substitutes.
3. "He must be in the end no loser."
What end? The end of the debt, or the end

124 Atonement Reviewed.
of life, or the end of eternity? Mr. Armour
does not say what end, and I of course do
not know; but from what he says about the
Righteous Judge, the idea is suggested that
he means the end of eternity — a long time to
wait. Crowded as is the legal profession, all
the jurists in America, with Mr. Armour to
help them, could not convince one of a thou
sand of those unhappy men who have lost all
by security debts, that they have not been
permanently injured by becoming security.
Still Mr. Armour, like a pagan oracle which
can never be convicted of verbal error, is on
the safe side; for he can easily say of these
surety wrecks or dupes that they were not
"justifiable in becoming security," and there is
an end of the matter. Mr. Armour is right,
and the poor dupe ought to suffer irreparable
loss for his unjustifiable kindness in becom
ing surety!
4. " Provided he were justifiable in becom
ing surety."
This seems about equivalent to saying that
all 's well that ends well — all ill that ends ill;
and this again smacks profusely of that form
of utilitarianism which makes the right and
wrong in action depend upon consequences.
But who besides Omniscience can know
whether he is or is not justifiable in becom-

Substitution Abnormal. 125
ing surety? We poor, blind mortals know not
what a day, or even an hour, may bring forth —
can not see the end from the beginning. May
be to-day the happy owner of thousands, to
morrow miserable bankrupts.
fustifiableness, then, it seems, is a prime
prerequisite to suretyship. For without it the
surety loses all. As a man can never fore
see the consequences, he of course can never
know whether kindness to a friend, as his
surety, is justifiable or criminal; and hence,
to become surety is to incur the liability of
perpetrating criminal kindness.
5. The surety "must be rewarded fully." '
" His reward is assured beyond doubt by the
Righteous Judge of all the earth."
Certainly, he that giveth a cup of cold wa
ter in the right way shall not lose his reward.
But Solomon says: "He that is surety for a
stranger shall smart for it." But according to
Mr. Armour this reward is assured only on
condition a man is "justifiable in becoming
surety," and this he can never know but by
the consequences of the act, and, hence, not
till after the act is done. Hence, I do not
see how he is to get " beyond doubt" as to
this reward until after his doom is fixed. But
there is another aspect of this full and assured
reward that requires some attention.

126 Atonement Reviewed.
(i) Whence comes this reward? Who pays
it? Mr. Armour does not inform us. He tells
us that it is assured by the Righteous Judge;
but he may not mean that the Righteous Judge
actually pays it. Now we must suppose that
the surety is paid either by the law, or cred
itor, or by the original debtor. If by the for
mer, then the law or creditor receives less
than his just claims by exactly the value of
this re ward.
Mr. Armour does not specify the amount
of this reward, but says it is " a full reward."
If full, then it can not be less than the sum
actually paid by the surety — ought, in justice,
to be greater. If you pay to A $1,000 for B,
you would not think any thing less than $1,000
a full reward for your kindness; you might
reasonably expect more.
Hence, it is as plain as A B C, that if Just
ice, or the Creditor, pays this full reward, then
the whole debt at least is lost, and justly some
thing besides.
Now, I submit whether it would not be bet
ter to forgive defaulting debtors outright, and
at once, than for Justice to require all this tur
moil, and then lose the whole debt at last?
But possibly Mr. Armour does not mean
that the law pays this "full reward," but that
the original debtor pays it. This is probably

Substitution Abnormal. 127
his meaning. But the original debtor is con
fessedly bankrupt, and can not of himself pay
this " full reward." How, then, can it be paid?
Two ways are conceivable. The Righteous
Judge, the Creditor, becomes the sinner's as
surer, or surety, to the substitute. This assur
ance justifies the man in becoming surety for
the debtor. The case now stands exactly
thus: The substitute stands as surety for the
debtor to the creditor, and the creditor stands
as surety for the debtor to this substitute for
the payment of " a full reward" for his substi
tutionary services. The substitute fully pays
the debt. How now is he to be fully reward
ed by the debtor? The latter being utterly
bankrupt, the surety must look to his in-
dorser, the " Righteous Judge." The surety
pays the debt of the principal to the creditor,
and the creditor pays it back to the surety —
a circular process — nothing gained. Accord
ing to Mr. Armour's definition a debt is
"not something that ought to be paid, but
something that ought to have been paid" —
the creditor is as truly a delinquent debtor to
the substitute as the substitute was to the
creditor. But this indebtedness may be dis
charged in either one of the two conceiva
ble ways. First, he may pay the substitute
directly out of his own coffers, which, as we

128 Atonement Reviewed.
have before seen, is equivalent to paying the
debt himself. Or, secondly, he may arbitra
rily invest the debtor with ability to pay this
full reward and necessitate his payment of
it; but this, again, is to pay the debt himself
by an indirection. On any plan possible to
Mr. Armour's theory, we are driven to the
inevitable conclusion that the sinner owes
justice or the law or God a debt, and just
ice or law or God pays the debt and turns
the sinner free from all obligation to law, and
puts him under grace.
This last view of the subject is probably
what Mr. Armour really means to teach. He
holds that payment by a substitute releases
from legal obligation, yet it actually creates
obligations of grace. He says (p. 199): "But
it must be remembered that deliverance from
law in this way, so far from being deliverance
from obligation, involves their coming under
even greater obligations. The obligations of
grace are weightier . . . than legal obliga
tions." (Parenthetically, it would be the easiest
thing imaginable here to convict our author
of antinomianism. The difference between
being under law and under grace is not a dif
ference as to obligations, but purely and ex
clusively as to the possibility and means of

Substitution Abnormal. 129
meeting the obligations under which men are
necessarily placed. But I forbear.)
From this quotation it may be inferred that
Mr. Armour, by the full reward assured to
the substitute means, the services rendered
to him by the debtor under the obligations
of grace. Hence, that the substitute pays in
legal currency, or penalty, and receives his
full reward in gracious currency, or in the
gratitude of the debtor or the redeemed.
This, however, can bring no relief to the
theory. For, if the debtor is ever able to
reward his substitute with gratitude or any
thing else, it is exclusively because, accord
ing to the theory the Righteous Judge, his
security, unconditionally causes or necessi
tates this gratitude and necessitates the dis
charge of the obligation of grace (so-called).
Much more might be said in disproof of the
sweeping proposition that substitution is a
normal provision of law. But enough has
been said. We have seen that substitution
is abnormal; first, because it generally, if not
in every possible case, involves more or less
injustice — often the greatest injustice. Sec
ondly, because it is rarely possible in any
form, because it is generally impossible in its
conditions, and what is impossible in its con
ditions should not be considered normal in
9

130 Atonement Reviewed.
itself. We have also seen that if the prin
ciple is admitted it can be of no advantage to
the creditor if the substitute has to receive
a full reward — that is, substitution costs the
creditor as much as it secures to him, or
even more, and in better currency, accord
ing to Mr. Armour, because " the obligations
of grace are weightier than legal obligations."
For the creditor to invest the debtor with the
ability to pay, and even necessitate him to
pay, is simply to pay himself or " relax the
law," or set aside its penalty without any legal
consideration at all.
But relaxation is Mr. Armour's " holy hor
ror; " but, like other frail mortals, what he
hates that he does. " Happy is he that con-
demneth not himself in that which he allow-
eth."

SECTION IX.

THE GREAT ANTITYPE-SUBSTITUTION.
MR. ARMOUR admits, that though sub
stitution is a normal provision of law,
yet that among men it has "indeed a narrow
limit; " not because law objects to it, but be
cause of the impossibility of finding adequate
substitutes. But in all this elaborate and ingenious dis
cussion, he has his eye steadfastly fixed on
Christ, whom he deems the great antitype sub
stitute, feeling assured that in him he would
readily find every prerequisite of a substitute
fully adequate to obey the law and meet its
penalties for as many as it might be deemed
advisable to save.
Let us see whether his success equals his
sanguine expectations. He says (p. 188):
"A surety must be one who was free from
the obligation of law, not under law?
Note this fact, freedom from law is an in
dispensable qualification of a substitute.
Again he says (p. 189): "Scripture clearly
(13O

132 Atonement Reviewed.
teaches that Christ, being a divine person,
was not under the law, and being possessed
of perfect human nature he was qualified to
be our surety, or substitute. This has all
along been so clearly and fully taught by the
orthodox that there is no need to do more
than refer to it in this place."
Remarks. — 1. Where does the Scripture
teach this doctrine? Nowhere.
2. Does Mr. Armour make orthodoxy, or
the Bible, his supreme authority? He gen
erally slaps orthodoxy in the face, except
when it happens to support Armourism. But
orthodoxy he deems sufficient authority on
this, one of the most intricate and vital ques
tions in the whole substitutionary theory.
3. Does the reader know exactly what our
author means when he says, " that Christ be
ing a divine person was not under the law?"
Does the reader know that in this proposition,
so unobtrusively made, he begs the whole
question in the interest of substitution, and
gently lays the responsibility on the broad
shoulders of orthodoxy?
His logic runs thus: "A substitute must
be free from the obligation of law." Christ
being a divine person was not under the law.
Therefore, Christ was an adequate substitute

The Great Antitype Substitution. 133
for all for whom he might choose to engage
as such. The logic is good, but the concluT
sion is false, because the minor proposition is
a glaring petitio principii.
Let us look after it a little. I do not know
Mr. Armour's notions of the Godhead. He
however admits the divinity of Christ, and
this is sufficient. The word Christ is here
used in the sense of the God-man. Now it
is very evident that Christ as God is not un
der law, as a rule of obedience; for his will is
law. Christ, then, as God, is not under law,
nor is it possible for him in any sense ever to
come under or obey law; for Mr. Armour has
told us that obedience consists in the surren
der of the will to the will of another; but
there is, of course, none above God to whose
will he (God) can surrender. Hence, Christ
as God can never come under law, or obey it
either for himself or another. But Christ, as
a man, was born under law (Gal. iv. 4), is
yet under law, and will ever be under law.
Hence, it is as clear as the sun in the heav
ens that Christ as God can not be a substitute
for men, Armour being judge; and equally as
clear that Christ as man can not be a substi
tute for men, Armour still being judge.
But may there not be something in the
union of these two natures that takes the hu-

134 Atonement Reviewed.
man from under law, and renders the God-
man capable of becoming a substitute?
I answer, No. The union is not an amal
gam. The human does not become inhuman,
nor the divine undiv'me. No tertium quid is
formed. The two natures remain ever dis
tinct. Every act Christ ever did was either
wholly divine or wholly human — no act was
ever partly human and partly divine. Such
an act is inconceivable. The truth, in the
light of these irrefutable facts, is fairly demon
strated that if Christ, as God, could not be a
substitute for men, nor Christ, as man, such a
substitute, then he as the God-man could not
be a substitute at all.
Here we are brought face to face with the
same irrepressible obstacles that beset substi
tutions among men — the impossibility of an
adequate substitute.
We find them, too, at the very point where
Mr. Armour expected to have the least trouble.
When Mr. Armour says, " that Christ, be
ing a divine person, was not under law," he
does not mean, as we subsequently learn,
that Christ never came under law, but that
he voluntarily assumed an obligation which
was not natively his own. The leading postu
lates of his theory on this subject are that
God was under no obligations to save any

The Great Antitype Substitution. 135
part of fallen humanity, but, moved by sov
ereign free grace, he sent his Son to redeem
a part of humanity — the Son, under covenant
engagements, voluntarily consented to assume
humanity, and come under law, in order to
become their legal substitute, and fulfill the
precepts of the law, and pay its penalties in
their stead. The following quotation pretty
fully sets forth his scheme.
He says (p. 207): "The law had no claim
upon the Son; there was no obligation upon
him to come under its commandment. His
doing this was pure, mere free grace. To
this he was moved by nothing but his divine
compassion. But found under law, under
that law which, with its precepts and its pen
alties was against us, he as the result of his
own act of grace in joining himself to us,
and by virtue of his being every way fully
qualified to rescue us from ruin, was under
imperative obligation. The law then directly
demanded of him, since he was found under
the very law which was upon us, all that we
owed, whether payment of penalty or obedi
ence to the precept."
Again, he says (p. 209): "The law avails
itself instantly of the glorious perfections,
qualifications, and resources of the Mighty
One, the Almighty One, who comes under it."

136 Atonement Reviewed.
Remarks. — In these quotations Mr. Ar
mour strangely interblends truth and error.
In this case the error largely predominates.
To remove the chaff will require a little pa
tience. 1. Whether the great Creator was under
any obligations to provide salvation for sinful
humanity is a question which I am glad I am
not required to settle, for I am certain I should
not know how to decide. Mr. Armour as
sumes to understand it, and volunteers a neg
ative answer. He may be right. He has
some unique notions about freedom and re
sponsibility. It will be remembered that he puts the
Creator under a nondescript voluntary neces
sity. What that is he alone is presumed to
know. But, the question very naturally arises, If
the Creator always acts both voluntarily
and yet necessarily, how can he do what he
is under no obligation to do? It is a blessed
truth that the Creator has provided salvation
for men — at least a part of them. If this
was exclusively a voluntary act, then it may
be supererogatory
If it was purely a necessary act, then it is
simply childish to say either that he was or
was not under obligation to provide salvation.

The Great Antitype Substitution. 137
But if the act was both voluntary and nec
essary, then Mr. Armour alone, it is pre
sumed, is able to settle the perplexing ques
tion. As he has been pleased to settle it
negatively, the world has abundant reason to
rejoice that the Creator, compelled by neces
sity or something better, has transcended the
terms of the obligations imposed upon him
by Armourism, and has actually provided sal
vation for men — at least for the elect.
2. There is something of truth in what our
author says about Christ's being under law —
the same law that requires men to love God
with all their heart, etc., made it his impera
tive duty to espouse the cause of humanity,
and, by his obedience unto death, make him
self a sacrifice in the interest of humanity.
But Mr. Armour has, essentially, misstated
this vital truth— has so blended it with unmit
igated error as to give his readers only a
confused and, withal, a radically false notion
of Christ's subjection to law.
His first grand error is his failure to dis
criminate between the divine and human side
of Christ's character. Hence, he falsely puts
the whole God-man under law in the same
sense in which a mere man is under law,
than which a greater absurdity is not possible.
For Christ, as God, was not under law at all.

138 Atonement Reviewed.
Christ as man alone was under law, he as
man alone was capable of obedience unto
death. But if he, both as God and man, was
under law — was obedient unto death — then,
of necessity, he suffered and died both as
God and man. Is Mr. Armour willing to ac
cept the logical correlates of his own postu
lates? 3. Our author represents both sides of the
God-man as coming voluntarily under law.
This, too, is fatal error.
Christ, as God, voluntarily allied himself
with humanity — assumed humanity which
was under law, but did not and could not
thereby become subject to law as God.
The human spirit is, in a sense, allied with
a material body, but does not, and can not,
on this account, become subject to physical
law. But while Christ, as God, voluntarily allies
himself with humanity without assuming the
obligations of humanity, he, as man, comes
under law from necessity, just as Mr. Armour
and all other men. He was born of a wom
an — born under the law. How is it pos
sible for one born under the law to come vol
untarily, by an act of will, under the law?
It is hence too plain not to be seen by all
that have eyes that Mr. Armour attributes to

The Great Antitype Substitution. 139
both natures in Christ what is true only of
the divine — namely, voluntariness; and to
both what is true only of the human — namely,
subjection to law. Such indiscriminate and
wholesale blending of the human and divine
spawns " darkness itself," and renders a for
mulation of the doctrine of atonement on a
scientific basis utterly hopeless.
4. The impracticability of Mr. Armour's
scheme of substitution will further appear
from the following rash, if not unpardonable,
utterances (p. 209): " The law avails itself
instantly of the glorious perfections, qualifi
cations, and resources of the Mighty One,
the Almighty One, who comes under it. The
law itself commands him, and requires of
him that he who is fully able should obey it
by rendering all that it demanded, and this
by one offering." Repressing whatever of
unsavory feelings these bold words may
awaken, let us glance at the attitude in which
Mr. Armour is pleased to put " the Mighty
One, the Almighty One."
" The law avails itself of the " abilities of
the Almighty One! "The law itself com
mands him!" "The law itself . . . requires
of him! " Requires him to do what? To
obey it. How? By rendering to it all that
it demands of all sinful men — at least of the

140 Atonement Reviewed.
elect. Marvelous doctrine! Marvelous for
its absurdity!
If Mr. Armour had said this of Christ's
human nature exclusively, or as distinguished
from his divine nature, it would be partially
true — true in relation to his personal obliga
tions to the law, but not true as to any substi
tutionary obligations — that is, he obeyed the
law for himself and none else. But to predi
cate these things of " the Almighty One " is
the sum of all absurdities.
Properly may we ask, What is this super-
theistic law — this law above omnipotence that
imperiously commands the Almighty One " to
do this and he doeth it? " Well, strange to
say, it is simply the will, or the behests of the
will, of " the Almighty One " himself. The
Almighty One obeying the will of the Al
mighty One! The Almighty One surety to
the Almighty One for the adjustment of all
legal claims against sinful men!!
Certainly all those for whom the Almighty
One has assumed all obligations, and for
whom he stands as surety against his own
anger, have no reason to concern themselves
about their salvation! Possibly Mr. Armour,
when he says, " the law commands him (the
Almighty One) and requires of him that he
who is fully able should obey it," means that

The Great Antitype Substitution. 141
God, as the Son, was under law to God, as
the Father.
No relief can be found, however, in the
mystery of the Trinity; for if there are three
divine persons, there are not three divine
wills; else there would be three Gods.
Hence, the Almighty One can net surrender
his will, or render obedience to a superior
will, for there is no such will. Mr. Armour's
scheme of substitution logically requires us
to believe either that there are verily three
Gods, or that God is under law (in command
ment of course) to God, and actually sur
renders his will to his will. Neither is credi
ble. 5. It is not quite apparent how Mr. Armour
can escape universalism; or, rather it is suf
ficiently clear that he can not escape it all.
He says, in one of the quotations above
given, that Christ " as the result of his own
act of grace in joining himself to us (taking
human nature), and by virtue of his being
every way fully qualified to rescue us from
ruin, was under imperative obligation. The
law, then, directly demanded of him, since
he was found under the very law which was
upon us, all that we owed, whether payment
of penalty or obedience, to the precept."
Here we are plainly taught that Christ, by

142 Atonement Reviewed.
joining himself to us, or by taking our nature,
came actually under law, and he being able
to deliver humanity from sin, the law directly
demanded of him all that we owed. Again,
he says: "Christ's voluntarily coming under
law was his voluntarily consenting to be our
substitute." Now, it is sun-clear that if Christ's taking
our nature, put him under law, and his being
under law makes him the substitute of those
whose nature he had assumed, and if all for
whom he is a substitute are necessarily
saved, as Mr. Armour often asserts, then the
salvation of all is assured. A universal and a
necessitated salvation is the logical result of
our author's scheme of substitutionary atone
ment. To this logical result of the theory Mr. Ar
mour (if not in fact a universalist) would ob
ject, and allege that the Son, by covenant en
gagement, became the substitute of a part of
mankind only. To this the following is an
adequate reply:
1. It was not any covenant engagement,
real or imaginary, between the Father and the
Son that put Christ under law, but the actual
taking of human nature — his being born of a
woman — that put him under law. Without
this assumption of human nature he could

The Great Antitype Substitution. 143
not save one man. But in assuming it as to
one man, he necessarily assumed it as to all;
for human nature is the common property of
all. Hence, the law which makes Christ the
substitute of a part necessarily makes him
equally the substitute (so called) of all. I
will illustrate after our author's method.
Suppose a business firm of ten men break
with a bank debt against the firm of $10,000.
An outsider, having a special friend in the
firm, generously proposes to relieve him alone,
and does become his substitute in the firm
and releases the bankrupt debtor from all lia
bility. He thus, by becoming the substitute
of one, does, by the law, inevitably become
the substitute of all. The application is easy.
Christ, Mr. Armour would have us believe,
makes a covenant engagement to save some
men, but not all. But he could not save them
without taking their nature. But in taking
their nature he necessarily becomes their
substitute; for in taking the nature of a part
he took the nature of the whole. More for
mally thus: Christ is, by the divine law, made
the legal substitute of those whose nature
he assumed. He assumed the nature com
mon to all men. Therefore he is the legal
substitute of all men.
There is no possible method of escape from

144 Atonement Reviewed.
this conclusion, except by relaxing the law
which required Christ to become a sin offer
ing for mankind; or, as Mr. Armour would
prefer to express it, a substitute for the elect.
What law is this? The great moral law of
the world ! " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God, and thy neighbor," etc. The law that
binds man to obedience is the same law that
required Christ to make his soul an offering
for the sin of all those whose nature he had
taken. Mr. Armour must of sheer necessity relax
this law and release Christ from its obligation
in reference to the non-elect; otherwise his
own theory binds him inevitably to the fort
unes of universalism. It ought to be uni
versally known, and never forgotten, that the
great moral law — the law of universal love — ¦
is the law that required Christ to die for hu
manity. To die for all was to fulfill the law;
not to die for all was to break the law — just
as not to love our neighbor is to break the
law. To make atonement for one was, from
the nature of the law, to make atonement for
all; not to make atonement for all was to
make it for none.
Mr. Armour very properly denounces re
laxation of law as the greatest of all possible
calamities. He criticises Turrettini, Hodge,

The Great Antitype Substitution. 145
and other standard authors, for conceding
some kind of relaxation. He advises, scolds,
and rebukes substitutionists generally in re
gard to the bad consequences of "relaxation
of law."
Yet, marvelous to tell, he, to save his lim-
itarianism, unwittingly relaxes the law, so as
to release the Great Atoner from the obliga
tion of dying for all men!
Mr. Armour denies utterly the possibility of
relaxation of law by sovereign prerogative, or
anything else, on its penal side; but by logical
implication asserts it on its beneficent side.
Turrettini, Hodge, and other standard au
thors, admitted relaxation on the penal side
that some men might be saved. But Mr.
Armour's theory admits and logically asserts
relaxation on the beneficent side, so that some
men might be hopelessly damned.
Every man to his own liking; but I some
what prefer the Turrettinian relaxation.
But why does Mr. Armour relax the law
on the beneficent side, which leaves untold
millions of helpless souls without atonement
and without the possibility of salvation?
He seems quite unconscious that he has
relaxed it, and probably would insist that he
has not done so. He, however, can escape
the charge only by proving, first, the actual
10

146 Atonement Reviewed.
existence of a covenant engagement on the
part of the Son to redeem only a definite num
ber of souls; secondly, that this covenant en
gagement (so-called) takes precedence of the
great moral law — thou shalt love God and
thy neighbor — and actually released Christ
from all obligation of law to make atonement
for millions of those with whom he had allied
himself by taking their nature.
Neither of these propositions is capable of
proof. But if they were actually proved, this
fact of itself would fully prove the relaxation
of the law on its beneficent side. Mr. Ar
mour is one of the boldest of relaxationists,
and yet has a holy horror of relaxation! I
will see him again on relaxation.
But why does our author deem it necessary,
by covenant stipulation between the high con
tracting parties, Father and the Son, to limit
the atonement to a part of mankind?
I will vouch for him that it is not because
he is not philanthropic, or generous hearted.
He would be glad to know that all men could
be saved. Why, then, does he limit the atone
ment? It is not his warm, Christ-like heart
that limits it. It is only his cold, cast-iron
logic that is guilty of this ungenerous thing.
But what has his logic to do with the ques
tion? After this method Mr. Armour has

The Great Antitype Substitution. 147
fixed up an atonement by substitution which
necessitates the salvation of all for whom it is
provided. But the Bible teaches that all are
not saved. Therefore, the atonement is not
provided for all. Hercules could not break
this chain of steel.
But the conclusion is utterly false, because
it denies that Christ did actually fulfill the law
which required him to make an atonement for
all men. The fault is not in the logic as such,
but in Mr. Armour's atonement.
But why does our author put God in com
mandment under law to God? Why require
"the Almighty One" to abnegate his will and
submit to the will of "the Almighty One," as
if there were two or more almighty ones?
Why make " the Almighty One " a substitute
for sinful men? Why impute all the infamous
and abominable crimes of which men are
guilty to " the Almighty One ? " Why require
" the Almighty One " to obey the precepts of
his own law, obedience to which alone can
secure the happiness of his creatures? Why
make "the Almighty One " suffer the penalties
of his own law in the place of transgressors,
when these penalties or sufferings are the
natural and inevitable subjective consequences
of a violation of a law which is the only con
servative of good?

148 Atonement Reviewed.
Why do Mr. Armour and other substitu-
tionists commit themselves to these revolting
absurdities? Not because they are wholly blind to their
enormities; nor for the want of earnestness
and candor in their search for truth; nor be
cause their natural instincts do not revolt at
them; but for the simple reason that the exi
gencies of the substitutionary scheme of atone
ment imperatively require their acceptance
and defense.
Knowing that Christ did make atonement;
believing that atonement by substitution is the
only atonement possible; and accepting the
fact that Christ was both God and man; and
knowing that as man he could fulfill the law
only for himself, and consequently could not
fulfill it for millions of others, they are driv
en by sheer necessity to the conclusion that
Christ, on his God-side, actually became a sub
stitute for men, obeyed the law in their stead,
both as to precept and penalty. The logic is
severe and faultless. But the great vitiating
fallacy is in the assumption that atonement
can be made by substitution, and by substitu<
tion only. This assumption, accepted as an
unquestionable truth, it leads by logical con-.
sequence to a legion of the grossest contradic
tions. The only method of escape from these

The Great Antitype Substitution.

149

insuperable troubles is the rejection in toto of
the assumed, unproved, and preposterous no
tion that atonement, in any proper sense, pan
be made by substitution.

SECTION X.

SURETYSHIP AND RE-INSTATEMENT.
MR. ARMOUR'S scheme of atonement
requires and necessitates re-instatement.
He says (p. 140): "Perfect suretyship ....
is always and manifestly suretyship which, in
its own nature, secures and necessitates the re
instatement of every one in whose behalf it is
undertaken? (The italics are his.)
Again (p. 142), he says: "Christ's perfect
obedience satisfies the whole debt, the entire
obligation the sinner was under to the law of
God." Again (p. 144), he says: "Re-instatement is
necessitated by and virtually included in all
real atonement."
Again (p. 145), he says: "This very re
instatement is itself part of, and an essential
part of, true suretyship, true and full satisfac
tion of law."
He also teaches that Christ fully satisfied
the law both as to precept and penalty. He
says (p. 143): "To satisfy fully the law, the
(150)

Suretyship and Re-instatement. 151
obedience and suffering of Christ must fully
insure the re-instatement and restoration to
obedience of his redeemed."
Again (p. 189): Christ delivered us from
"our debts — that is, from all that law demand
ed of us whether in its penalty or its precept."
Again (p. 207): "The law, then, directly
demanded of him . . j . all that we owed,
whether payment of penalty or obedience to
the precept."
Remarks. — 1. No one can deny that Mr.
Armour is a " restorationist " of the strictest
sect. He makes restoration an essential part
of the atonement itself. No restoration, no
atonement, is his philosophy.
2. This necessitated restoration sweeps to
the winds his doctrine of freedom with the
power of a contrary choice. This is only one
of his inconsistencies. According to his teach
ing, the elect have no more power not to be
saved than they have to save themselves.
This, of course, is not fate — it is only cer
tainty. 3. Mr. Armour seems to put the substitute
upon double duty; or seems to require of him
supererogatory obedience. First, Christ, as
substitute, obeys the precept of the law for
the elect, and, secondly, pays the penalty fo,r

152 Atonement Reviewed.
them at the same time. How can this be?
Obedience and penalty are mutually exclusive
of each other. If there is perfect obedience,
there can be no penalty — no cause, no effect.
If there is penalty it is because there is dis
obedience. The theory seems to require of
the substitute an impossible thing; first, tp
pay a penalty when there is none; or, second
ly, to obey the precept and pay the penalty of
disobedience for the same party at the same
time — that is, to love God substitutionally, and
at the same time endure the penalty or con
sequences of not loving him. This is to love
and not love at the same tim£. Contradic
tions, it is allowed, are impossible things with
God, but not exactly so with Mr. Armour.
Possibly Mr. Armour may mean (though he
nowhere, I think, so explains) that Christ first
"pays the penalty" for the elect, and then,
after that, obeys the precepts of the law for
them foiever.
This, however, brings no relief, as the fol
lowing contradictions clearly show:
(1) According to the theory, Christ by cov
enant engagement became the substitute of
the elect from eternity, and was as truly their
surety in law before they were born as he is
now, being a lamb slain from the foundation
of the world, as Mr. Armour rightly says.

Suretyship and Re-instatement. 153
How, then, was it possible for the elect to sin
at all? Or, if it was possible to sin in any
way, how could they possibly come into con
demnation, or endure penalty, seeing that
Christ was obeying the precepts of the law in
their stead?
How Mr. Armour could clear away this
darkness that enshrouds the substitutionary
theory is, to me, inconceivable.
If he should say that God decreed their sin
that he might illustrate his glorious grace in
their redemption, then I would like to inquire,
Where did he get his information? Is he the
custodian of God's secrets?
(2) According to Mr. Armour, the substi
tute not only obeys the precepts and pays the
penalties of the law, but also restores the sin
ner himself to obedience. So that the law
receives a threefold obedience — twice by the
substitute, once in precept, and once in pen
alty, and once by the re-instated sinner. In
the judgment of common men, obedience to
the precept of the law excludes penalty, and
obedience by the substitute excludes obedience
by the principal, but our author has decided
otherwise; so, for the sake of his substitution
ary atonement, the world is required to be
lieve the law capable of a threefold obedience.
4. Mr. Armour admits that justice, like

154 Atonement Reviewed.
some men, is very prompt and persistent in
demanding its dues, but often very slow to
pay its debts.
He often distinctly avows that substitution
instantly, and fully, and forever releases the
principal from all obligations, pains, and pen
alties in all ordinary suretyships. But some
how this grand characteristic of substitution
fails in the most important of all substitutions
— the great antitypal suretyship of Christ for
the elect. It does not instantly deliver. But
why this ungracious failure? Are types more
perfect than their antitypes? Human law
more efficient than divine? Man more just
than God?
Mr. Armour perceives the difficulty, but
adroitly shrouds it in mystery, and passes on
to less difficult matters. Good strategy! He
says (p. 144): "Re-instatement is necessitated
by and virtually included in all real atone
ment. That this result is reached only after,
and it may be as we judge long after, is a
consideration that detracts nothing from its
true connection. Time is for us; with God
lapse of time divides not, separates not, things
that in his purpose, and in their own nature,
are joined together."
Remarks. — 1. According to Mr. Armour,
real atonement is never made until re-instate-

Suretyship and Re-instatement. 155
ment actually occurs. For if re-instatement
is virtually included in real atonement, then
there is no real atonement prior to the re-in
statement. On page 145 he makes the point
with more distinctness: " This very re-instate
ment is itself part of, and an essential part of,
true suretyship."
But Mr. Armour, I think, did not mean to
teach this absurdity, but in his great eager
ness to make the atonement save all for whom
it was made he incautiously commits himself
to it.
2. But the material point in the case is this
unaccountable tardiness of justice — its delay
of the re-instatment guaranteed in substitution.
We can very well afford to let Mr. Ar
mour's incongruities take care of themselves;
but we can not afford to admit, without better
reasons than Mr. Armour has given us, that
justice, or rather the " Righteous Judge," is a
tardy or reluctant pay-master. I should cer
tainly think him more a charlatan than a phi
losopher who should pretend to comprehend
the incomprehensible God.
But what now concerns us is not to com
prehend the Deity, but Mr. Armour's substi
tution. There is, however, but sparse hope
of success, for he makes substitution necessi
tate instant re-instatement in God's purpose,

156 Atonement Reviewed.
but it does not re-instate as to men " it maybe
as we judge till long after" it has re-instated
in God's purpose — that is substitution instant
ly re-instates the sinnner in the divine pur
pose, but does not actually re-instate him till
long after this important event; or the sinner
is really acquitted and stands guiltless before •
the bar of justice, and yet in bitter reality is
involved in sin, and condemned in the court
of conscience, and actually realizing the pun
ishments of his sins. A guiltless human soul
writhing in penal fire, or remorse! A sinner,
all of whose debts are fully paid, against
whom neither law nor justice has the shadow
of a claim, manacled and dungeoned, it may
be, scores of years for debts that have no ex
istence? Such is Armourism. Relaxation of
law, it will be remembered, is our author's
" pet aversion," yet he is palpably guilty of
relaxation of law, or something worse, when
he permits the guiltless to suffer as the guilty
alone can justly suffer. But why is this?
Well, let our author explain it. He, it is pre
sumed, understands it. He says: "Time is
for us; with God lapse of time divides not,
separates not, things that in his purpose, and
in their own nature, are joined together."
The explanation seems to need explanation as
much as the thing sought to be explained.

Suretyship and Reinstatement. 157
"Time is for us." Well, what of that?
How does this account for the sinning and
suffering of justified souls?
"With God lapse of time divides not ....
things that in his purpose, and in their own
nature, are joined together."
This, at best, is only partially true. But let
it all be granted, how does it explain, or re
lieve, or even mitigate the unjust sufferings
which our author's theory imposes upon those
for whom Christ has fully met all liabilities.
To blink a difficulty is not to remove it by any
means. A suitable illustration of the point in hand
is furnished by the thief crucified with Christ.
(Luke xxiii. 39—43.) This thief and malefac
tor was without doubt saved, which proves to
Mr. Armour's satisfaction that he was one of
the elect. His substitute had settled all his
debts, and he stood unchallenged and unchal
lengeable before the law. But his re-instate
ment, though his legal right had been some
how deferred for a long time, and he, purely
for the want of this rightful re-instatement
and restoration to happy obedience, fell into
gross sins — became a bad mar. a malefactor,
a thief. The Romans crucified him, and he
said justly, too, for his wickedness. Remark
able case! Really justified before God,

158 Atonement Reviewed.
but justly condemned before Pilate! Whose
fault was it that he was a thief? If he had
been restored to obedience, as substitution re
quired that he should, he would not have died
a malefactor. Mr. Armour, of course, would not admit a
delinquence in the law, nor can he think it
possible that his substitution is at fault.
What, then, must be done with this case?
Take refuge in mystery! " Time is for us,"
but not for God.

SECTION XI.

PENALTY— MERITOEIOUS AND UNMERI-
TORIOUS.
MR. ARMOUR says some true things
about penal sufferings, and some things
doubtful. He says (p. 119): "Law is mandatory as
regards the payment of penalty; therefore vol
untariness is an essential element in one case
as in the other (obedience to precept), so that
neither passive involuntary sufferings endured,
nor mere willingness to endure sufferings in
flicted, but sufferings voluntarily rendered, can
satisfy law."
Again (p. 120): " Involuntary sufferings not
only do not satisfy law, they render absolutely
nothing unto the law?
Again (p. 121): "In what sense can he be
said to have fulfilled the law, who merely suf
fered — that is, who was passive — that is, who
did nothing? How can the inflicting of suffer
ing upon him without and against his will be
regarded as fulfillment of law by him?"
Again (p. 123), he says: "Not mere will-
(r59)

160 Atonement Reviewed.
ingness to suffer, but active and willing en
durance . . . satisfies law." Again: "Atone
ment by involuntary sufferings is a manifest
absurdity." (Mr. Armour discusses this sub
ject at considerable length; but the quotations
above given present his principal points.) It
will be observed that he rejects the doctrine
of passive obedience, as held by orthodoxy.
In this he is assuredly right; for a passive obe
dience is a contradiction in terms. It, how
ever, has been generally accepted for cen
turies. Mr. Armour also rejects the equally prepos
terous notion that there is any merit in penal
suffering as generally held. If he had consist
ently done this he would have freed the sub
stitutionary scheme of atonement from the pre
posterous idea that the saints are saved in whole
or in part by penal righteousness. He, how
ever, consistently denies that there can be any
penal righteousness in perdition or elsewhere.
This absurdity the orthodox form of the doc
trine seems to allow; for if penal righteous
ness, or the bearing of penalty, can save one
man, why not save all? Hence, passive obe
dience would ultimately save all rebels under
penalty. Beyond these two vital points, I do not deem
it safe to indorse Mr. Armour.

Penalty. 161
While he denies the possibility of atone
ment by passive penal sufferings, he asserts
atonement by active penal suffering. Hence,
he does not deny the possibility of penal right
eousness; and in fact saves the elect, wholly
or in material part, by it. On this account I
think his scheme only a slight, immaterial im
provement upon the old one.
The orthodox theory asserts passive obe
dience to penalty. Mr. Armour rejects this,
and asserts in lieu of it active or voluntary obe
dience to penalty. His order is thus stated
(p. 122): "What now is the real and full de
mand of the law? Is it not this: Pay what
thou owest, penalty first, then obedience to the
precept?" Christ as a substitute first pays
the penalty, then renders obedience to the
precept. Hence, of necessity the elect are
saved largely by Christ's penal obedience.
(We have previously had occasion to sympa
thize with our author over his troubles in ref
erence to obedience to the preceptive side of
the law.)
But the voluntary obedience to penalty is
something unique. But Mr. Armour under
stands himself. He clearly sees that passive
obedience to the penal side of the law would
release all the disloyal spirits of rebeldom. On
the other hand, if he denies penal obedience
11

162 Atonement Reviewed.
in toto, then there will be no method by which
the multitudinous debts of the elect can ever
be paid by a substitute. Happily his fertile
imagination is equal to the emergency. Vol
untariness — this will exclude salvation by pas
sive penal suffering on one hand, and on the
other secure the salvation of the elect by the
voluntary penal suffering of an adequate sub
stitute. What a happy expedient! No won
der Mr. Armour so highly prizes it. Such
immense consequences depend upon it.
It seems almost cruel to dispel the fascinat
ing illusion. Nevertheless, but not without
high admiration of its brilliant author, a few
things need to be said of it somewhat unfa
vorable. i. The conception of a voluntary obedience
(excuse the tautology) to penalty is born of
a vague and, ill-defined notion of the nature of
penalty itself.
Reward and penalty are of course anti
thetical: the former the natural and neces
sary sequence of obedience to law; the latter
the natural and necessary sequence of diso
bedience. The one is as inevitable as the
other. This is true of all law, and there are
absolutely no exceptions except in the sphere
of supernatural Providence.
The obedience, and also the disobedience,

Penalty. 163
are alike voluntary or active — hence no pas
sive obedience to law in any form, for a pas
sive obedience implies that an act is both
voluntary and involuntary at the same time,
which none can fail to see is a contradiction.
But while the act of obedience, and also the
act of disobedience, are both strictly volun
tary, the reward — the consequent of obedience
and the penalty — the consequent of disobe
dience — are strictly and in the highest sense
involuntary — utterly beyond the control of
the voluntary power. The reward may be
desired; the voluntary act may be put forth
exclusively, as a means to procure it; but the
reward comes of necessity; comes as the nec
essary, not the voluntary, result of the vol
untary act. If a man strictly obeys hygienic
law, good health is the desirable, but neces
sary, consequence or reward. The obedience
is voluntary, but the reward is necessary.
Exactly the same relation exists between
disobedience and penalty.
The disobedience is voluntary, but the pen
alty — the divinely appointed consequence — is
necessary. The consequence ma)' be known
or not known. May be desired or not de
sired — the result, the penalty is all the same —
is not voluntary but necessary.

164 Atonement Reviewed.
This is well illustrated by the cases named
by our author (pp. 220-25).
The following will answer my purpose:
"Three men stepped into the electric light
works, in the city of Syracuse. One of them
was observed to stoop over and reach out his
hands to a thirty light dynamo machine. In-?
stantly he was drawn close to the generator,
without a noise, and without uttering a sound.
He had unwittingly grasped the positive and
negative rods, and was dead."
Unwittingly and voluntarily the unfortunate
man grasped the fatal rods; death was the
penalty. What power, voluntary or otherwise, has
man over the consequences of his voluntary
acts? A voluntary "payment of penalty," a vol
untary " suffering of penalty," a voluntary " en
durance of penalty," a voluntary " obedience
to penalty," is one of the most illusive of all
conceits. Even in the sphere of commer
cial law, which is Mr. Armour's special hob
by, voluntary obedience to penalty is simply
impossible. Whatever "obedience" there
may be to it, or "endurance" of it, or "pay
ment" of it, comes purely from necessity, and
is in no. sense voluntary. ,
If B owes C $100, and refuses to pay, and

Penalty. 165
is compelled by law to pay it, I suspect our
author would consider this forcible payment
the penalty, and insist that B had some sort
of voluntary power over it. This, however,
would be to mistake the precept of the law
for the penalty of it. The $100 is the very
thing the law requires, and is in no sense the
penalty or consequence of a violated obliga
tion. The penalty in this case would con
sist in the state of consciousness arising out
of the refusal to pay, and the facts connected
with the case. This consciousness is purely
necessary, and is no more voluntary than is
personality itself.
If voluntariness to penalty is impossible in
the principal, it is (if there are degrees in im
possibilities) a thousand-fold more so in a
substitute. How could the good health se
cured to B by obedience to the laws of health
be taken voluntarily or otherwise by C, and
C's physical condition be transferred to B?
How could another man have voluntarily tak
en the penalty of the man who unwittingly
grasped the positive and negative rods of the
dynamo machine and was dead? How can
one man take the consciousness of another
who refuses to pay a just debt?
If men had voluntary power over the con
sequences Qf their acts, then there would be

166 Atonement Reviewed.
no fixed relation between means and ends,
cause and effect. If this were true, a man
might be a rebel against all law, and yet, by
an act of will, set aside the consequences of
. his universal lawlessness; might be happy,
might be any thing at will. Science and all
government, except by perpetual miracle,
would be impossible.
To invest man with voluntary power over
the consequences of his own or another's vol
untary acts, whether of obedience or disobe
dience, is to put him in the place of Omnipo
tence himself; or rather is to give him power
to do what Omnipotence himself can not do
without abrogating his own established order
of things, and reconstructing the world on a
new and different plan.
If there are such things as infinite impossi
bilities, Mr. Armour's voluntary obedience to
penalty is one of the number. But if there is
no such thing as a voluntary penalty, and if
there is any such thing as obedience or merit
in suffering or paying penalty, then lost spir
its have ground for hope and gehenna may be
come "a land not inhabited," our author's
voluntary obedience to the contrary notwith
standing. 2. Let us learn something of the nature of
this penalty which, according to Mr. Armour,

Penalty. 167
Christ actually "obeyed," "paid," "suffered,"
"endured." Paul says, It is the wages of sin, that it
is death. This is spiritual death. It is car-
nal-mindedness. "To be carnally-minded is
death." It is enmity to God. "The carnal
mind is enmity against God." It is the sec
ond death, the worm that never dies, the ven
geance of eternal fire, "destruction from the
presence of God and the glory of his power."
Now, how was it possible for the sinless
Christ, voluntarily or otherwise, to " pay this
penalty," to " obey it," " suffer it," " endure
it?" The assumption is suicidal. It assumes
that Christ, as to his human nature, was capa
ble of bearing all the penal consequences of
the sins of all the elect, or it assumes that
Christ, as to his God-nature, was capable of
suffering the remorseless penalties of his own
law; and that Christ, as to his human nature,
was capable of loving God with all the heart,
and of being happy in that love, and at the
same time capable of being at enmity against
God and of suffering the tortures of the un
dying worm — feeling " the vengeance of eter
nal fire," or else that Christ, as God, was in
rebellion against God and suffered the wrath
of God, or of himself, as God.
Of course, no substitutionist' believes these

168 Atonement Reviewed.
rabid absurdities. It is immensely to their
credit that they do not believe them; but they
owe their escape from them, if I mistake not,
to a happy fallacy of logic. How does Mr.
Armour escape? Let us see.

SECTION XII.

" EQUIVALENT PENALTY."
WITH these words for a caption, Mr.
Armour gives us a labored presenta
tion of substitution and equivalent penalty.
He says (p. 156): "Law as apprehended and
administered by men in all lands, and in all
ages, has not only admitted substitution in
every case in which a really adequate substi
tute was offered, but it has admitted equiva
lent penalty."
He says (p. 164): "When all men claim
and exercise the right to enact and adminis
ter laws in which equivalent penalty is pro
vided for, how can we assume that the Su
preme Lawgiver is not able to administer
law, in its utmost range, in accordance with
this principle?"
Answer. — Why is the wise man not able to
do what the fool does? Simply because he
is a wise man. Why can not God do what
man does? Simply because he is God. Cer
tainly, the Almighty has a right to take les
sons from human legislation if he can do no
(169)

170 Atonement Reviewed.
better? But I should hate to degrade the
Supreme Lawgiver by even intimating that
he had predetermined the possibilities, real or
imaginary, of human law as types of his own
law. It may be worthy of mention that when
Mr. Armour wishes to emphasize the power,
the rigor, or unrelaxibility of law, he appeals for
types, analogies,'and illustrations to divine law.
But when he wishes to clear the way for sub
stitution, equivalent penalty, etc., he appeals
to human law. In this he is strategetically
wise. A glance over the field fully assured
him that, for substitutionary purposes, the
less he had to do with divine law in the realm
of nature the better. He saw that it could
sometimes be made to answer other valuable
ends, but should never be invoked in favor of
" substitution and equivalent penalty."
He asserts a beautiful and predetermined
analogy between substitutions in human law
and the moral law (which Christ fulfilled),
considering these human substitutions preor
dained types of substitution in moral law.
See pp. 158-59.
If God ordained these analogies, he, of
course, ordained the laws, both human and
divine. What human laws? All laws — no
distinction is made. I should hesitate to at-

Equivalent Penalty. 171
tribute to the Supreme Lawgiver all the idi
otic and cruel laws that have disgraced hu
man codes. But Mr. Armour is a bold man,
and possibly sometimes " wise above what is
written." 2. " Equivalent penalty 'J '" What is that?
It is the substitution of one penalty for anoth
er of equal value. If I owe a debt, and you
become my surety, and I fail to pay, and you
have it to pay, you do not incur the penalty;
because you render to the law just what it re
quires — the money. You then obey the law
on its preceptive side. But I am the delin
quent. I suffer the penalty or the consequences
of not paying. If the civil law authorizes it,
I may be made to suffer stripes or imprison
ment. If the law does not authorize such
measures, then I am left to the retributions
of moral law, self-condemnation, self-degra
dation, remorse of conscience — God enforc
ing in the soul the law of moral retribution.
This is natural penalty, and divine because
it is natural. It is God's anger, God's curse
upon the transgressor of moral law. It is
my penalty, exclusively mine, and I can no
more rid myself of it than I can rid myself
of my personality. It is, in every respect,
exactly what the law, or God in nature, re
quires it shall be.

172 Atonement Reviewed.
Now, Mr. Armour, being horrified at the
idea of putting the sinless Christ into this
state of degradation and death, proposed to
find another penalty of exactly the same
value. Which, if it is another, must of
necessity be in some respects different.
But if in any respect different, then it is
not the equivalent. But why? Simply for
the reason — the imperative reason — that the
penalty is itself exactly what the law requires,
or what God in nature makes it. Hence, any
variation in the penalty would be a relaxation
or deflection of the law, or, if you please, a
setting aside of God's decree. These facts
which, I think, defy the power of refutation
crush utterly Mr. Armour's scheme of equiva
lent penalty, and reduce him to the humili
ating necessity of utterly relaxing the law, for
doing which he has so soundly berated others,
or of putting the sinless Christ in the sinner's
actual state of mind, self-condemnation, re
morse, a state of spiritual death. He can
choose which horn to hang on.
Possibly Mr. Armour, if confronted with
this difficulty inherent in his equivalent pen
alty, might seek to escape by an appeal to
mystery, or to the incomprehensible, because
the "Almighty One " is the substitute and
the penalty-bearer.

Equivalent Penalty. 173
There is no relief by this route. God, it is
universally conceded, can not contradict him
self. It, I suppose, will be admitted by Mr.
Armour, and all other sensible men, that God
himself has ordained the necessary relations
between cause and effect, antecedent and
sequence, and that disobedience and penalty
are causally connected. Hence, the disobe
dience given, the penalty is just what it is by
the immutable purpose of God. It then fol
lows that if he changes it in the slightest, or
substitutes another for it, he contradicts him
self, or changes what he himself has made
unchangeable. 4. But it may be asked, Are there no such
things as equivalent penalties? I answer
none, absolutely none in the sphere of moral
retribution. This is sufficiently apparent from
the facts just stated, but may become more
appreciably so if we attempt to conceive of
an exactly equivalent penalty in any given
case. You may analyze the penalty to your own
liking, and make it consist of many or few
elements. Suppose you say it comprises dis
honor, shame, remorse, self-condemnation,
hatred of God, and divine wrath.
Then when you attempt to construct your
equivalent penalty what will you put into it

174 Atonement Reviewed.
as the exact equivalent of dishonor, or of
shame, or of remorse, or of self-condemna
tion, or of hatred to God, or of divine wrath?
Can you construct one to your own satisfac
tion? Is such a thing possible? Can the Al
mighty himself do it without reversing his
own laws and reconstructing human nature?
It is an easy matter for men to deceive
themselves as to " equivalent penalty," by
such illustrations as that a dollar in gold is
equivalent to a dollar in silver. This is pure
sophistry. As to commercial value, this is
not equivalency at all, but simply identity.
A dollar is a dollar, and not the equivalent of
a dollar, whether it consists of a gold, or
silver, or " rags and lamp-black."
Moreover, gold, silver, etc., are pure enti
ties, having positive values, and are in various
ways comparable one with another by weight,
measure, etc. Very different is it with re
wards and penalties in the sphere of moral
law. These are not entities that can be
weighed or measured, but simply mental
states, which are the respective and necessary
results of obedience and disobedience. The
value, too, of penalty, if we must attribute it
to value, is purely negative, consisting in the
privation of the good that comes from obedi
ence to law, just as small-pox or leprosy is

Equivalent Penalty. 175
the negative of good health. But penalty,
like small-pox and leprosy, though negative,
is intensely real. If equivalent penalty was
possible, it would be like changing one dis
ease for another.
What is wanted is not the substitution of
One penalty for another, but the removal of
penalty, which can be done by a restoration
to obedience, and in this way alone. Mr.
Armour, when he represents law as saying,
"Pay what thou owest, penalty first, then
obedience," turns philosophy, and theology as
well, upside down, or runs the cart before the
horse. To remove the cause is to remove the ef
fect; to obey is- to destroy the penalty or pre
vent the penalty.
The first thing, then, is obedience, and not
penalty, as Mr. Armour puts it.
This is God's method of deliverance, which
Mr. Armour seems not to understand.
5. Mr. Armour speaks of " substitution and
equivalent penalty " as if they were the most
natural and common things imaginable.
From many of his expressions one, who
might happen not to know better, would
readily infer that human government and
God's government were chiefly run on the
substitutionary scheme.

176 Atonement Reviewed.
He, however, admits that "substitution
among men" is indeed confined to a narrow
limit, but this is owing to the impossibility of
finding adequate substitutes.
I suppose we would not perpetrate a verbal
falsehood, but a deal of nonsense, if we should
say that gehcnna might become a substitute
for paradise, provided, and if — if and provid
ed — it was adequate fully and satisfactorily to
answer the purpose both of gehenna and par
adise. But this terrible proviso makes the
statement hardly less than ridiculous.
It has previously been seen that what is
impossible in its conditions is impossible in
itself. If this is not true then nothing is im
possible. Hence, all our author's parade about
substitution being a normal provision of law,
is only a prodigal waste of brain power.
6. In reading Mr. Armour's extraordinary
book, I was constantly expecting to come to
some historic fact — some real occurrence —
besides little incidental substitutions in the
lowest sphere of human law, which would
strikingly exemplify, or, at least, clearly illus
trate his doctrine. But this reasonable ex
pectation was never realized. The best he
has thought proper to give us — possibly the
best he or any one else could give us — is a
supposititious case. To this he seems to at-

Equivalent Penalty. 177
tach immense importance, and for this rea
son will receive brief attention.
Mr. Armour presents his hypothetical case
at considerable length, with much particulari
ty, and in glowing style. As we are more con
cerned with the pertinency of the case to the
question in hand than with its style of pre
sentation, I will give only its essential points.
Of two young men, kinsmen of the same
country, one was faultless, the other prodi
gal. The latter plunged into sin, broke the
laws, and was consequently arraigned before
the court and convicted. The sentence pro
nounced upon him by the wise and righteous
judge was, according to the requirements of
the law, a fine of a thousand talents or per
petual banishment.
The criminal, unable to pay the money, had
no hope of escape from perpetual banishment.
At this juncture the faultless young man ap
peared and said to the judge: "I am ready
to take the place of my condemned kinsman.
Lay on me the penalty, be it what it may."
The judge informed the faultless young man
that the law would not permit any one to be
banished as a substitute for the criminal, but
that the other branch of the penalty might be
assumed by another. Whereupon the thou
sand talents were paid by the faultless young

12

178 Atonement Reviewed.
man. " The culprit was not banished. The
kinsman proved to be the heir of an im
mense estate, and his poor friend, who so
narrowly escaped perpetual banishment, be
came a joint heir with him to that vast inher
itance." (Pp. 161-63.)
(I think every essential is included in this
abbreviated statement.)
Here we have the supposititious facts stu
diously framed to fit the case.
Now the application:
1. This righteous judge represents God, the
righteous lawgiver.
2. The law represents his will.
3. The prodigal represents the sinner — all
sinners. 4. The " thousand talents, or perpetual ban
ishment," represents an alternative penalty.
5. The faultless young man represents the
substitute, who is assumed to bear an equiva
lent penalty. Mr. Armour is evidently much
pleased with his invention. He seems to re
gard it as both proof and illustration of his
scheme of " substitution and equivalent pen
alty," and hence, occasionally refers to it in
the subsequent part of his discussion. I,
however, have somewhat against it.
1. Civil law very rarely prescribes penalty
with an alternative. But if it always did so,

Equivalent Penalty. 179
this would be absolutely nothing to the ques
tion at issue. We are not discussing human
but divine law. God's ways are not as our
ways. If Mr. Armour had only been considerate
enough to furnish from God's word just one
instance — only one — of an alternative penalty
in the sphere of moral retribution it would
have been of immense service to inquirers
after truth.
Instead of doing this most reasonable and
desirable thing he puts them off, much to their
disappointment, with a glowing picture of his
fertile imagination. Why is Mr. Armour so
unaccommodating? Why, when the child
asks bread, does he give a stone? fictions for
facts? ideals for realities? The history of all
the past can not furnish a solitary example of
an equivalent penalty in the sphere of divine
law; but imagination can idealize them by
scores!!! "In the day thou eatest thereof thou (not
somebody else) shalt surely die." What
would be the equivalent of this death? "The
soul that sinneth it (not another) shall die."
Who can name the equivalent? " To be car
nally-minded is death." Where is the equiva
lent? " The wages of sin is death." If Mr.
Armour had only thought to give us this

180 Atonement Reviewed.
equivalent of spiritual death, who knows but
that it might supersede the necessity of any
atonement at all? It no doubt would if it
should not happen to be like some of his sub
stitutions — impossible in its conditions.
Parenthetically, it is of little consequence,
but is it strictly true, that if a man suffers the
alternative of a penalty fixed by law that he
suffers the equivalent of the penalty? Does
he not suffer the penalty itself, and not an
equivalent of it? Mr. Armour thinks not,
and that settles it.
2. The kinsman, ..." the heir to an im
mense estate," who is he, and what of him?
He represents the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
both God and man. Then, does he, as God
or as man, become the substitute of the elect,
and suffer in their stead? According to Mr.
Armour, it was as God that Christ became
the substitute of men. This he assumes to
be true when he represents the substitute as
"the Almighty One," as previously noticed;
also when he says (p. 176): "The infinitude,
the divinity of Christ, and this alone, furnishes
grounds for believing that he rendered perfect
satisfaction to the law." Here it is distinctly
admitted that Christ, as man, could not satisfy
the law for others. But his assumed satisfac
tory obedience to law as a substitute for oth-

Equivalent Penalty. 181
ers is expressly referred to his infinitude, to
his divinity. When Mr. Armour teaches
that Christ, as man, could not render obedi
ence to the law for others, he teaches the
simple truth. But he did as man, born of a
woman, keep the law, and if he could not
keep it for others, then he, of course, kept it
for himself.
But when he teaches that Christ, as God, or
because of his infinitude, or of his divinity,
obeyed the law for others, he teaches essen
tial error. For exactly in the sense in which
he was a substitute for others did he obey the
law for others; hence, if he as divine was a
substitute for others, then he as divine was
obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross; as divine he suffered, shed his blood,
died on the cross, lay in the grave, and rose
the third day. Mr. Armour, bold as he is,
would not be willing to admit such results,
though they inhere in his scheme of substitu
tion. These two indubitable facts — first, that
Christ, as man, could not fulfill the law for all
men, and secondly, that he, as God, could not
be born, suffer, die, etc. — demonstrate the im
possibility of his fulfilling the law as a substi
tute for others in any sense.
Mr. Armour seems unconscious of the fatal
predicament in which he places himself when

182 Atonement Reviewed.
he makes Christ, as divine, the heir to the im
mense estate, because, this amounts simply to
saying God is the heir of God. An equally
great absurdity is involved in his saying that
the poor prodigal " became a joint heir with
him to that vast estate." Joint heirship im
plies equality of nature among the heirs. If
Christ, as divine, is the heir, then the poor
prodigal, in becoming a joint heir, of necessi
ty became divine. Can Mr. Armour stand
the consequences of his substitution and
equivalent penalty? If so, contradictions are
not impossible of belief.
The plain teaching of the Bible is, that
Christ, as human, is the heir, and those that
believe in him are the joint heirs. Hence, he
is called " the first-born among many breth
ren." But if he, as divine, is the heir of God
or of himself, then it follows of necessity that
all joint heirs are divine.
The stronghold of Mr. Armour is mystery.
He says (p. 175): "How Christ could fully
satisfy the claims of law, endure 'in strict
rigor of justice the unrelaxed penalty of the
law ' in his person, must be to all created in
telligences for evermore a mystery as incom
prehensible as that of creation itself." In
this I fully concur, and deem it something
more difficult to comprehend what does not

Equivalent Penalty. 1S3
exist than that which is known to exist. But
I question Mr. Armour's right to call a con
tradiction a mystery, and ask us to believe it
as something incomprehensible.
He continues: "When we deal with the
infinite, it is the mysterious and the incom
prehensible that is credible." Facts often
compel us to believe things in themselves in
comprehensible. But we never believe a
thing because it is incomprehensible. That is
a mystery. But contradictions are incapable
of rational belief. Certainly, it is not the in
finite that is incredible, but Mr. Armour's
substitution. Can I not believe in the infinite
without believing in our author's substitution?
Is one involved in the other? If not, why at
tempt to excuse the enormities of one by an
appeal to the mysteries of the other?
In Mr. Armour's studied, hypothetical case,
what the faultless young man did for the prod
igal was not done as a penal substitute, but
purely as a benefactor. He was not a crim
inal in any sense. He paid no penalty, for
none was imposed upon him by the court, and
no man can impose one upon himself; for
what is self-imposed, or voluntarily assumed,
is not a penalty. To call the voluntary pay
ment, the thousand talents, a penalty is an un-

184 Atonement Reviewed.
pardonable abuse of terms. It was purely a
benefaction to the prodigal.
No two words need to be more sharply
discriminated than are the words benefaction
and penalty.
(1) Benefaction is always voluntary, never
necessary — that is, if an act is voluntary it is
not penal. But, as we have previously seen,
no penalty is voluntary. Benefaction and
necessity exclude each other. So penalty and
voluntariness exclude one the other. If one
could be hung, at his own urgent request, in
the place of another, it would not be penalty,
but pure benefaction. To confound words so
radically different excludes the possibility of
clear and exact statements on any subject.
According to Mr. Armour's method of put
ting things, if a man pulls a thorn out of a
dog's foot he is a substitute for the dog, and,
of course, in some way pays the penalty of
his mishap. We might say he is a benefac
tor, not a penalty-sufferer.
(2) Benefaction is honorable — at least not
disreputable. But penalty for the violation of
just law is dishonorable, infamous.
(3) Benefaction is a blessing — a double
good — a blessing to the benefactor, because it
is more blessed to give than to receive; a
blessing to the beneficiary, because it is in

Equivalent Penalty. 185
some way helpful and pleasing. But penalty
is in itself no good to anybody, but the reverse
of all good. It is evil, and only evil. The
utmost that can be expected from it is that it
may be the means of preventing subsequent
lawlessness, and its consequent evils. What
an unpardonable misuse of words is it in Mr.
Armour to parade the benefaction of the
faultless young man, to the amount of a thou
sand talents for the relief of his kinsman, as a
penalty !
Or, if Mr. Armour is right, then the most
of the good that comes to men in this world
comes in the form of penalties. The more
and greater the penalties a man suffers,
the more good he does, the happier he be
comes. The angels, too, those generous min
isters to the heirs of salvation, are penalty
payers for men. Pretty dream! but alas!
when we wake we learn that penalty is the
stern retribution of violated law, or the fire
of God's indignation in the lawless human
soul. Enough for the present.

SECTION XIII.

RELAXATION OF LAW AND SELF-CON
DEMNATION.
OUR author has an irrepressible antipa
thy to all "relaxation of law," "wav
ing of penalty," etc., "by sovereign preroga
tive." He indicates the errors of others, and
reprobates the concessions made by his prede
cessors of the substitution school. No writer
seems to be sufficiently anti-relaxationist to
satisfy him. He seems emulous of the high
distinction of being the extremist of extrem
ists on this subject. In opposition to all he
has to say on this point, I have no protest to
offer. I should not choose to express myself
in all cases as he does. But the idea of sav
ing sinners by relaxation of law, or by setting
aside the divinely ordained penalty, is contrary
alike to reason and revelation.
But while he properly insists that all the
requirements of the law shall be f illy met in
the matter of human salvation, he, I think, has
not the faintest conception of the true method
by which these law claims are met. But the
(186)

Relaxation of Law. 187
object of the present discussion is the consid
eration of Mr. Armour's theory of salvation,
and not the presentation of an adverse theory.
If some of the old orthodox substitutionists,
such as Turretini, and others, had the privi
lege of replying to Mr. Armour's criticisms of
their sins in the matter of " relaxation by sov
ereign prerogative," they might very perti
nently and sharply say, " Physician, heal thy
self," or, " He that lives in a glass house should
not throw stones."
I have read no author holding that the atone
ment satisfies moral law in any proper sense
who goes, to my thinking, further in the direc
tion of relaxation than Mr. Armour. In fact,
he seems to relax law in every conceivable
vital aspect of it, except as to the bare amount
of what it claims to be due. The law in his
hands remorselessly demands the last pound
of flesh, but seems by no means scrupulous
as to whose flesh it is, or who pays it, or what
kind it is.
The following instances of relaxation, or
variation, are observable; some of which I
have previously noticed:
1. Our author relaxes the moral law on its
beneficent side as to exclude a part of the
human race from the possibility of salvation.
Christ was born of a woman, born under

188 Atonement Reviewed.
the law to redeem them that are under the
law. Mr. Armour, by some sort of secret and
special covenant engagement between the Fa
ther and the Son, released Christ from the
law, so far as to redeem a par! only of those
under the law whom he come to redeem.
This has been previously more fully explained.
A false faith that tends to deaden the sym
pathies of the human soul for our fellow-men
is worse than a false faith of the contrary ten
dencies. 2. According to Mr. Armour's exposition of
law it requires the instant re-instatement to
happy obedience of all for whom satisfaction
has been made. But the law is so relaxed or
modified, or is so lax in its execution, that all
for whom satisfaction has been rendered are
denied rightful re-instatement for a longer or
shorter period of time, and some for scores of
years, all the while sinning and suffering be
cause their dues have not been given them.
Illustrated by the thief who was crucified with
Christ. Our author's apology for this deflec
tion, or delinquency of law, is that "time is
for us," but not for justice or God. To this
dereliction of law (if this is the right word) is
due all the sins and sufferings of the elect in
this world.
Query: If law can withhold its dues for a

Relaxation of Law. 189
score of years, may it not for ten score? Or,
if for a day, why not forever?
3. According to Mr. Armour substitution
involves double imputation. The legal status
of the criminal is transferred to the substitute,
and that of the innocent substitute is trans
ferred to the criminal.
Now, this is palpable relaxation, or rather
abrogation, of the whole law as to the person
of the criminal. Christ having become the sub
stitute of the elect, both as to precept and as
to penalty, they are in no sense the subjects
of law, though they may be thieves, liars,
murderers, etc. Such is the theory.
(This is not the doctrine of the Bible. Even
those who believe in Christ are not released
from obligation to the law in the sense that
they are not required to love God and their
neighbor, much less are all for whom Christ
died released from authority of law.)
Still it is claimed that the law received all
its claims as to quantity of obedience in the
person of the substitute, and is therefore fully
satisfied. This assumes that law exists for its
own sake, and not for the sake of its subjects.
Such a release from law, if it were possible,
would be a calamity, and not a benefaction.
This may be readily seen. All good in the
physical world comes from obedience to law,

190 Atonement Reviewed.
and all ill from disobedience. It is equally
true that the good that necessarily comes of
obedience, comes directly to those that obey;
and the evils that come from disobedience come
directly to those that disobey.
Mr. Armour's philosophy seems to deny
this proposition, and makes evil (at least for
the present) come to the obedient substitute,
and perpetual good comes to the disobedient
principal. But in this it separates effects from
their causes, and makes evil the consequence
of obedience, and good the consequence of
disobedience. Another result of this theory, not less ab
surd, is the following:
If good comes necessarily from obedience,
and comes directly to the obedient alone, then
the substitute realizes all this good, and those
for whom he is a substitute realizes none of it;
for only those that obey are blessed.
The converse of this proposition is true in
the principal and substitute on the penal side
of law.
It is, hence, clearly apparent that substitu
tion not only relaxes the law in regard to the
person of the principal, but deprives him of
all the good that comes from obedience and
concentrates all the evils, the natural conse
quences of disobedience, upon the substitute.

Relaxation of Law. 191
To say that such fantastic tricks are normal
in law — are normally provided for in law — is
simply a burlesque on law.
4. Our author also relaxes the law in the
matter of his " equivalent penalty." This is too
plain to be possible of concealment. The re
ward of obedience grows naturally, inevitably
out of obedience, and the penalty of disobe
dience comes inevitably out of disobedience.
The reward of loving God is the bliss that
comes of loving him, and the penalty of not
loving him is the negation of that bliss and
its concomitants. These facts, it is presumed,
none that can reason at all will think of deny
ing. How, then, is a substituted equivalent
penalty possible? Nothing short of a change
of the law of cause and effect can make a sub
stituted equivalent penalty possible.
5. Our author relaxes the law by substitut
ing a temporary for a perpetual or continuous
obedience. Obedience and reward we know
to be related as cause and effect. So of dis
obedience and penalty. It is equally certain
that cause and effect are co-existent and co
terminous. But Mr. Armour sets aside this invariable
characteristic of the law of cause and effect
by affirming a temporary (momentary it may
be) cause and a perpetual effect — that is,

192 Atonement Reviewed.
Christ's one act of temporary obedience as a
substitute forever secures to the elect the re
wards of obedience. Hence, we have a tem
porary obedience and a perpetual reward, or
an effect without a co-existent cause.
To reach this result, our author is under the
necessity of assuming that this obedience was
rendered by an infinite power who could in a
brief space of time render both a preceptive
and penal obedience equivalent to the obe
dience of all the elect through all eternity.
But, in making this assumption, he also as
sumes that Christ as God obeyed his own law
as a substitute for the elect. The monstrous
consequences of this assumption have been
sufficiently indicated.
Mr. Armour's refuge from such monstrosi
ties is of course mystery. "When we deal
with the infinite it is the mysterious, and the
comprehensible that is credible."
If these several positions are well taken,
Mr. Armour is a relaxationist of the first wa
ter. In fact, he sets aside well-nigh all real
law, and gives us in lieu a code of monstrous
fiction.

SECTION XIV.

SURETYSHIP AND COVENANT ENGAGE-
MENT.

M'

R. ARMOUR gives us an elaborate dis
cussion of suretyship. He gives a
quotation from an unnamed author which
gives us a pretty clear insight into his theory.
It is as follows (p. 191):
"Suretyship is a relation constituted by
covenant engagement by which parties be
come Legally One, and can be dealt with as
such in Law, each individual of the Unit be
ing bound injustice to suffer for the Unit, if
necessary ; but the stffering is not the suffer
ing of a part, but of the whole, in law, '¦Be
cause we thus jtidge that if one died for all
then all died."1 "
Remarks. — 1. This unit, let it be remem
bered, is purely a legal fiction for special tem
porary purposes. To it there is absolutely
nothing analogous in moral law.
2. Christ, as God or divine, never came
under law by covenant engagement, or oth-
13 (r93)

194 Atonement Reviewed.
erwise — as man he was " born under the law?
These facts have been sufficiently established.
3. Supposing all the extravagant things said
by Mr. Armour in regard to suretyship in
the sphere of human law should be granted,
they are not worth a farthing as illustrations
of the Bible doctrine of atonement.
4. Christ is nowhere represented in the
Bible as the surety of all for whom he suf
fered, but as the surety only of those that be
lieve in him. The Scriptures plainly teach
that some for whom he died will perish be
cause they will not have the man Christ Jesus
to reign over them.
5. The gravest objection to the quotation just
given is its unpardonable perversion of 2 Cor.
v. 14: "Because we thus judge that if one
died for all, then all died."
Our author assumes that when Christ died
on the cross, all those for whom he died did,
by virtue of special covenant engagement, die
legally unto sin, Christ having by his death
adjusted all legal claims against them.
This is an utter perversion of the text as
might be demonstrated in numerous ways.
The context utterly disallows it. Paul teach
es the same important truth here that he
teaches Rom. v. 6-10, Rom. vi. 1—4, Eph. ii.
1. If our author's application of 2 Cor. v.

Covenant Engagement. 195
14 is the true one, then there is only small
difference, at least in this life, between being
dead to sin and dead in sin, and the atone
ment is a nondescript legal myth rather than
" the power of God unto salvation to every
one that believeth."

SECTION XV.

ATONEMENT A VARIABLE QUANTITY.
ONE of the most remarkable characteris
tics of Mr. Armour's atonement is that
it seems to have no fixed or distinct nature of
its own. Proteus like, now it is one thing,
now it is something else; now it is something
in the place of- — instead of; now it is some
thing on account of, in the interest of, in be
half of for the sake of; now it is substitution,
involving as its essential elements double im
putation — an exact reversion of the legal states
of substitute and principal; now it is no more
than generous benefaction, differing not in kind
but in degree only from what one man, good
or bad, may do for another.
Now, this is truly a grave charge, and if true
Mr. Armour's atonement dissolves into thin
air. Let us see if this is true.
His doctrine as generally stated, involves a
change of places in law between the substi
tute and the principal, or, as he calls it,
" double imputation." I submit a few quota
tions. (196)

Atonement a Variable Quantity. 197
He says: " To satisfy the law the obedience
and sufferings of Christ must fully insure the
re-instatement and restoration to obedience
of his redeemed." " Suretyship that does not
necessitate the re-instatement of him in
whose behalf it is undertaken is fatally de
fective." " Re-instatement is necessitated by,
and virtually included in, all real atonement."
" Christ's suretyship is perfect, satisfies law,
satisfies conscience .... because it insures
the perfect re-instatement of the sinner."
" This very re-instatement is itself part of,
and an essential part of suretyship, true and
full satisfaction of law."
Much more to the same effect might, but
need not, be given.
This is substitution in the most exact and
rigid form conceivable. It is purely an affair
of law.
Whatever feeling or motive may prompt
the individual to become a substitute for an
other, the discharge of the duties of the sub
stitute is exclusively a matter of law, is obe
dience, suffering, etc., in the place of, and
not suffering or benefaction on account of, or
for the sake of.
Having read Mr. Armour's statements con
cerning the obligations of the substitute to
obey law, both preceptively and penally, and

193 Atonement Reviewed.
the necessitated re-instatement of the princi
pal, his attempt to identify substitution with
benefaction, charity, etc., awakens no slight
degree of surprise.
Certainly it would wonderfully strengthen
his cause if he could successfully identify
these things so radically different.
Mr. Armour is a shrewd strategist. We
have previously seen his bold attempt, for
strategic purposes, to identify objective and
subjective law — law in commandment and
law written upon the heart. He rightly
deems that his scheme of substitutionary
atonement will be wonderfully assisted, its
extravagances, its impossibilities, its inherent
deformities measurably mitigated if he can
ally it with all benefaction, all charity. The
prize is worth the effort, and he boldly makes
it. He quotes Paul to Galatians (chap. vi. 2):
" Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill
the law of Christ," and proceeds to identify
Christian charity and benefaction with sub
stitution. He says (p. 204), "What Christ does for
those whom he redeems and saves differs not
in its nature, but only in extent, from that
which is required of all in befriending and
helping those who are in trouble and in

Atonement a Variable Quantity. 199
need." "In fact (p. 205), whatsoever is done
for another in the way of charity is done in
his place and as his substitute. Substitution
true and proper enters into the ordinary acts
of brotherly kindness between friends and
neighbors. . . . To say that law sets a limit to
substitution, is to say that it forbids the utmost
helpfulness." "Job (p. 206) sums up his life
of benevolence and charity, and sets forth at
the same time the true nature of all charitable
deeds when he says: lLwas eyes to the blind,
feet was I to the lame?
The reader will remember that substitution
involves in every possible case double impu
tation — assumption of obligation on the part
of the substitute necessitates exemption from
obligation on the part of the principal.
Is this true in all or in any case of benefac
tion or alms-giving? Does the benefactor
assume the obligations or take the place of
the beneficiary, and the beneficiary the place
of the benefactor? No sane man, I think,
would say so, unless the exigencies of a the
ory xequired it. Was Job, when he was eyes
to the blind, himself blind; and did the blind
have eyes? When feet to the lame, was he
without feet? and were the feetless footed?
I put these ridiculous questions only because
Mr. Armour's absurdities require them.

200 Atonement Reviewed.
Job, in being eyes to the blind, and feet to
this lame neighbor, simply discharged his
duty to his neighbor, but did. not discharge
his neighbor's duty. He loved his neighbor,
but happily he did not do his neighbor's lov
ing. How cruel that would have been! All
happiness in heaven and earth comes of lov
ing. To be deprived of eyes or feet is a
great calamity, but not to love (love is the
fulfilling of the law), or to have another to
love in our place, is immensely worse. Per
dition itself is no worse, for not to love is
perdition itself.
Job was a benefactor to the blind and to the
lame, but he was not a substitute in any
sense. He obeyed law for himself and for
others' sake, but not in their stead.
If atonement is substitution, and substitu
tion is benefaction, then it seems that all di
vine benefactions are substitutionary. The
Father of lights, from whom cometh every
good and perfect gift, is the universal atoner
or substitute. Wherein do his substitution
ary acts differ from those of the Son? If
benefaction is substitution, and the Father is
a universal benefactor, sending rain upon the
just and upon the unjust, and the Son is a
substitute for a part of mankind only, is there
not conflict and confusion in the divine work?

Atonement a Variable Quantity. 201
If substitution or benefaction necessitates the
re-instatement of beneficiaries, will all or only
a part of mankind be saved?
By confounding substitution and benefac
tion, Mr. Armour has evidently involved his
atonement in utter darkness, or rather resolved
it into no atonement at all. This rash attempt
to confound benefaction, substitution, and
atonement is, to say the least that can fairly
be said, an unpardonable abuse of terms.
Benefaction, as we have previously seen,
has distinct characteristics of its own. This
I have previously indicated. Mr. Armour's
substitution, as we have seen, is also distinct
ly characterized — nothing like it in heaven or
earth — the guilt and punishment of the diso
bedient becomes voluntarily the property of
the obedient; and the innocence and blessed
ness of the obedient become the involuntary
property of the guilty.
Atonement, too, is neither substitution, in
any proper sense, nor is it ordinary benefac
tion. If our author had said that atonement, con
sidered as something done in the interest of
another, is a species or form of benefaction —
of benefaction of the highest conceivable
value — no serious objection would lie against
his proposition. But to identify benefaction
and substitution, involving; double imputation,

202 Atonement Reviewed.
is to take all benefit out of benefaction and
render it absolutely worthless; for the simple
reason, as has been intimated, that substitu
tion, in Mr. Armour's sense of the term, is itself
absolutely worthless. It in no sense increases
the sum of happiness in the moral world. For
if Christ "obeys the penalty" in my place,
then he endures all the unhappiness due to
me, and the sum of happiness is not increased.
But if he obeys the precept of the law in my
stead, then to him comes the blessedness, and
I am, of necessity, deprived of the blessedness
that comes from obedience. But the absence
.of this blessedness, or my deprivation of it, is
exactly the penalty of disobedience. Here,
then, is of necessity a double penalty.
Or, if Christ's obedience to both precept
and penalty restores me to actual obedience,
then the law receives a double obedience,
first from the substitute, and then from the
principal. In view of these facts, it appears that if our
author can establish a complete identity be
tween benefaction and substitution, then he
will prove that benefaction is no benefaction
at all, but a positive evil rather than a good.
Our author, in seeking to identify benefac
tion, charity, helpfulness, etc., with substitu
tion, has fairly renounced the fundamental
principles of his theory.

SECTION XVI.

INTERVENTION.
OUR author closes his marvelous book,
Atonement and Law, with a chapter
on " Intervention." By this intervention he
means the interposition of Christ as the penal
preceptive substitute of the elect in relation
to the moral law.
The following quotations will sufficiently
indicate his singular conceptions of the man
ner in which law is dealt with or satisfied.
He says (p. 215): "The hope of deliver
ance for those exposed to evil or danger from
the power of law, whether natural or moral, is
not that the law shall be suspended, relaxed, or
turned aside from its aim, or its penalties in
any way mitigated or modified, but that there
shall be, in some way, intervention of ade
quate power operating in a way to meet the
force of law."
Again (p. 216): "Nature everywhere sug
gests, and Scripture everywhere plainly and
abundantly reveals, the one only door of hope.
It is the intervention of power or means ade
quate to deal with law, meet its force and
(2°3)

204 Atonement Reviewed.
thus protect and deliver those exposed to
evil." Again (p. 217): "The one only way of de
liverance is by intervention of power ade
quate to deal with law, meeting its full force."
These statements are made in reference to
law in general; but he proceeds to apply his
universal principle to the intervention of Christ.
Thus "The Great Atonement is in exact ac
cordance with the one only way of deliver
ance from the power of violated law, as
taught throughout the entire kingdom of
Nature and Providence — viz.: Intervention of
power, adequate to deal with law and deliver
the exposed."
Again (p. 218): "Intervention is the act of
powers or persons themselves under law, and
is performed under and in accordance with
law. It is not and can not be the direct and
mere act of the Lawgiver. This is taught
in Nature and in Providence, but especially
in Redemption, in that God himself, when he
would rescue those exposed to evil, sent his
own Son, ' made under the law.' "
Remarks. — 1. In these quotations Mr. Ar
mour speaks of law as a force scarcely less
than omnipotent. He seems to array force
against force, law against law, and Omnipo-

Intervention. 205
tence against Omnipotence. But does he give
his readers any definite or intelligible idea of
how deliverance comes by the intervention of
adequate power? Is the reader not startled
rather than instructed? Evidently vehemence
and vagueness of utterance are not mutually
exclusive. 2. These expressions, taken apart from
others, would seem to mean relaxation, modi
fication, abrogation, or vanquishment of law.
He also says (p. 219): "Law triumphs over
law and honors the law over which it tri
umphs." Here, it seems, law grapples law
in mortal conflict, and law is the victor and
law is the vanquished — both omnipotent; for
he says (p. 68): "Infinite power confessedly
insures the inviolability of every .natural law."
Yet one seems stronger than the other.
But the victor honors the vanquished. This
may be a becoming courtesy to vanquished
law, but how, I do not understand. It seems
very much as if Omnipotence was in conflict
with itself. In all earnestness, I do not know
what our author means. I can conceive of a
phenomenon as the result of a single force,
and of phenomenon as a resultant of two or
more forces, but have not been able to under
stand how one law or force can triumph over
another law. This seems to smack of abro-

206 Atonement Reviewed.
gation of law. But relaxation, in Mr. Ar
mour's estimation, is the sum of all evils. We
must, therefore, allow that he does not mean
to teach what his language seems to teach.
I presume what our author really means by
such expressions as " power adequate to deal
with law, meeting its full force," "to deal
with law and deliver the exposed," or guilty
from penalty; and " Law triumphs over law,"
is simply a power adequate to suffer the pen
alty of law, and by this means satisfy law, and
thus deliver the guilty.
He formulates this idea, and attaches to it
all the authority of an axiom, thus: "The one
only source of danger — Violated Law. The
one only source of deliverance — The satis
faction of Law."
To the first part of this proposition there is
no serious objection. The latter part merits
unmitigated condemnation. " The only source
of deliverance — The satisfaction of Law ? "
Our author expresses much the same thing
when he personifies law and makes it say,
" Pay what thou owest. Penalty first, then
Obedience to precept." Others put it after
this order: "No punishment, no pardon?
The conceit seems to be an old superstition
of the Dark Ages, revised and elaborated into
another form, as follows:

Intervention. 207
Satan, by fraud, captured mankind, who,
by this method, became in some real sense
the lawful property of his satanic majesty.
To dispossess him of his captives without the
payment of an equivalent value would be to
defraud him of his rights, or would be a viola
tion of justice. Hence, to satisfy or meet the
demands of justice, a ransom must be paid to
Satan. In the light of this superstition, Christ
is made to suffer to satisfy justice in the in
terest of the prince of darkness. This theory
had more or less currency among theologians
up to the eleventh or twelfth century, when
the claims of Satan came to be denied, and a
false conception of justice and penalty of law
was made to take his place. Herce, the suf
ferings of Christ are represented as a payment
to justice, a satisfaction to law, and the law
is represented as demanding the payment of
penalty — the obedience to penalty — and as be
ing satisfied by the suffering of punishment.
Hence, no punishment, no pardon. "Penalty
first, then Obedience to precept." " The one
only way of deliverance — The satisfaction of
Law." The figment in the last analysis re- ,
duces to this. That effects have powers over
their causes or power to remove their causes;
hence that pandemonium may be expected
sooner or later to become " a land uninhabited."

2o8 Atonement Reviewed.
If sin is a debt, what the law or the creditor
lequires, what satisfies law or the creditor is
the payment of debt, and not the penalty or
consequences of not paying. The penalty sat
isfies nothing, neither creditor nor justice;
and justice, instead of being satisfied with the
non-payment, is actually defrauded of its
dues. Accordingto Mr. Armour, the consequences
or penalties of not paying a debt is a satisfac
tion of jusfice. The creditor, however, is not
likely to be satisfied with this view of justice
or law.
According to the theory, "obedience to
penalty," is more meritorious, more powerful
than obedience to precept. It is, perhaps,
always easier to get into trouble than to get
out. It requires more skill or power to cure
a disease than to prevent it. Obedience to
precept keeps men out of death, but obe
dience to penalty, according to our author,
restores the dead to life. If obedience to pen
alty, by a substitute, restores the principal to
spiritual life, of course the payment of the
penalty by the principal must have the same
effect. Hence, if Christ, by paying the pen
alty of the law, as a substitute for the elect,
brings them out of spiritual death, the repro
bate will come out by virtue of his own penal

Intervention. 209
obedience. Certainly his robe of righteous
ness will not be overly bright and clean, being
nothing but a penal righteousness. But he
will have the consolation of knowing that it
is made of the same stuff as that of his elect
brother, and is every way as good. He will
also have the additional satisfaction of know
ing that he is the artificer of his own fortune.
To this merit his elect brother of course can
set up no claim. Such the consequences of
the Armourian philosophy.
We have previously seen how Mr. Armour
seeks to free himself from this propension of
his theory to universalism — that is, by asserting
a distinction between a voluntary and an invol
untary obedience to penalty. We have also
seen the insufficiency of this strategy to save
him from universalism; for the simple but all-
sufficient reason that no voluntary act can be
a penal act, or voluntariness necessarily ex
cludes penalty.
3. Mr. Armour's salvation by adequate
power is as unsatisfying to the reason as is
his postulate that " Law triumphs over law,"
or his dictum concerning the satisfaction of
penalty. But what power is this which is " adequate
to deal with law, meeting its full force,"
and then " protect and deliver those exposed
14

210 Atonement Reviewed.
to evil?" We are told that it is the power
of the " Mighty One, the Almighty One."
We have previously seen the absurdity of
putting the Almighty One under law, and of
making him the penal and preceptive substi
tute of men. Mr. Armour attempts to escape
this absurdity by a fictitious distinction, or a
distinction without a difference. He says:
"It (intervention) is not and can not be the
direct and mere act of the Lawgiver." What
he means is the Father is the Lawgiver, and
the Son comes under the law and obeys unto
death as a substitute for men. The Son, as
man, confessedly could not become this sub
stitute. Hence, this Son, as God, becomes
the substitute. Still, we are required to be
lieve that intervention " is not and can not be
the direct and mere act of the Lawgiver," or
that one Almighty One gives law, and another
Almighty One obeys law, as a substitute for
men; or God, as Father, gives law, and God,
as Son, obeys law.
Mr. Armour seems to have some misgiving
in denying that " intervention " is the act of
the Lawgiver; hence, he cautiously qualifies
this act. " It is not . . . the direct and mere
act of the Lawgiver."
This may bring some relief to Mr. Armour's
mind, but unfortunately none to the trouble in

Intervention. 211
hand. It raises a little fog, which may some
what obscure the absurdity, but can not or-
move it. A " direct and mere act of the Lwa-
giver?" An act in the last analysis is a sim
ple volition. Are there any indirect volitions?
If not, then all acts are direct acts. So of
mere acts. Is any act more or less than a
mere act? Nothing needs to be clearer than
this, if intervention is not a direct and mere
act of the Lawgiver, then it is not his act at
all, but the act of some other Almighty One.
Then there must be a plurality of Almighty
Ones. Mr. Armour can not find his power ade
quate to deal with divine law in Christ as a
man, nor in Christ as God. He is, therefore,
under the necessity of finding it in the two
natures so united as to constitute something
neither human nor divine, but a sort of amal
gam, a veritable tertium quid, which is, how
ever, properly designated as "the Almighty
One," who is capable of coming under law,
obeying law in precept and penalty as a sub
stitute for men. I forbear to trace the meta
physical consequences of this view of the God-
man. Its utter enormousness has been pre
viously indicated.
The method by which Mr. Armour and
substitutionists generally deceive themselves

3i2 Atonement Reviewed.
seems to be this: They allow that Christ is
the God-man, and have learned to designate
him as the second person in a union of three
distinct personalities in the divine nature. Un
der the specious guise of this distinct person
ality, which is conceived of as infinite, they
predicate of him impossible things — impossi
ble, because contradictory. False or indis
tinct conceptions of the word person, as ap
plied to the Godhead, is largely responsible
for these extravagances.
If we choose to predicate three personali
ties of the divine nature, and do not take the
word person in a unique and nondescript
sense — in a sense utterly exclusive of the will,
which is the central attribute of person in its
ordinary and proper sense, we are hopelessly
involved in Tritheism. For if there are, in
some unique and indefinable sense, three per
sonalities in the divine nature, there are not
certainly three wills, or if there are, then
it is sun-clear that there are three Gods.
This is exactly the metaphysical outcome
of our author's doctrine: One Almighty One
giving law and another Almighty One obey
ing law. This is a logical affirmation of two
Almighty wills, for the Almighty will that
gives law is not the Almighty will that obeys
law. It is not one Almighty One that gives

Intervention. 213
law, and another Almighty One that is born
of a woman, born under the law, suffers and
dies. Such things are predicable of the God-
man only as to his human nature.
If these statements are even substantially
true, it deserves to be noted that they sweep
to the winds the much-paraded figment of a
covenant engagement between the Father and
the Son for the redemption of a part of man
kind; said covenant engagement implying the
existence of two distinct, independent wills.
This is too plain to require elaboration or illus
tration. These facts also disprove Mr. Ar
mour's oft-reiterated affirmation that Christ,
as a divine personality, voluntarily came un
der law. The sum of the truth on that sub
ject is that the divine nature, or God, volun
tarily allied himself with humanity, and was,
as to this humanity, born of a woman, and was
born under the law as are all other men. The
voluntariness was all on the divine side, and
none on the human side. The human alone
is under law, and not the divine in any sense;
else there are two divine wills, or two Gods,
one giving and one obeying law.
These facts also demonstrate with utmost
clearness that Mr. Armour's scheme of sub
stitution is an utter impossibility. The God-
man, as man alone was under law, and as man

214 Atonement Reviewed.
could obey law for himself alone; as God he
was not under law, because he is the Law
giver, and can not both give and obey law as
a substitute for men.
But for the sheer assumption that Christ,
by virtue of his divine nature, could and did,
in some mysterious and incomprehensible
manner, become the substitute for men, and
actually suffer and die in their stead, the doc
trine of substitution, of equivalent penalty, of
plenary satisfaction, could not live an hour
in a thoughtful mind. This unproved and
unprovable assumption is the foundation —
a foundation of quicksand — upon which the
whole superstructure of substitutionary and
penal salvation rests.
4. Mr. Armour's "intervention of power,
or means adequate to deal with law and meet
its force, and thus protect and deliver those
exposed to evil," deserves, on account of an
other aspect of it, a brief notice.
What is this "power adequate to deal with
law and meet its force?" Mr. Armour in
forms us that it is "the Almighty One."
What is this law with which the Almighty
One deals, and whose force he meets? Mr.
Armour gives the following answer:
" They (natural and moral law) are both
directly from the will of God. Infinite power

Intervention. 215
confessedly insures the inviolability of every
natural law. Infinite power sustains every
moral law." (p. 68.)
This suggests war among the gods. But
the gods, however great, are not almighty
ones — are less than omnipotent — not quite in
finite. This conflict, too, is only ideal.
But our author gives us a conflict, or a col
lision, or a struggle between " the Almighty
One " and a law which is " directly from the
will of God," and is sustained by "infinite
power." The conflict is not ideal, but is in
tensely real.
God dealing with his own law, which his
infinite power sustains — God meeting the
"force" of his own law to "protect and de
liver those exposed " to the divinely appointed
penalties of his own divinely sustained law!
This seems to be something of a puzzle — the
Almighty One seems somehow in conflict with
himself, or with his law, which his infinite
power sustains.
" What meaneth this ? " Hard to say. The
infinite is dealing with the infinite. The in
finite is enforcing his own law upon the infinite.
The Almighty One is dealing with his own
law, " meeting its force," fulfilling its pre
cepts, bearing its penalties, and satisfying all

216 Atonement Reviewed.
its demands, as a substitute for lawless, guilty
men? Even Mr. Armour does not quite under
stand this marvel of marvels, but seems to
believe it because he does not understand it.
" When we deal with the infinite it is the mys
terious and incomprehensible that is credible."
Nothing is credible because it is mystery, but
we believe a mystery because we can not be
lieve a contradiction. Between these radi
cally different things, mystery and contradic
tion, Mr. Armour does not always distinguish.
For the Almighty One to give law to men,
and support it with infinite power, and yet for
the Almighty One to come under that law,
deal with it, meet its force, and deliver those
who are exposed to its penalties, is a many-
sided absurdity — as Omnipotence dealing with
Omnipotence, Omnipotence meeting Omnip
otence, Omnipotence delivering from Om
nipotence, Omnipotence bearing the punish
ment inflicted by Omnipotence, Omnipotence
satisfying Omnipotence, Omnipotence tri
umphing over Omnipotence, or one divine law
over another divine law, both equally support
ed by " infinite power."
These flagrant contradictions Mr. Armour
is pleased, with ineffable substitutionary satis
faction, to call mysteries. From such mys-

Intervention. 217
teries we should ever devoutly pray, " Good
Lord deliver us! "
Another ugly consequence of our author s
theory may be indicated.
I have previously noticed the fact that obe
dience and good are, by divine and immuta
ble law, related as cause and effect, and that
whoever obeys receives the good. This must
be as true of the substitute as it is of the prin
cipal. If A loves God for himself, and aiso as a
substitute for B, then he of necessity re
ceives a double good or reward. Now, if the
Almighty One could become a substitute for
men; or, as a substitute love himself (love is
the fulfilling of the law), then would he not
receive an accession of good? or, in some un
imaginable way, receive something he did not
have before, and that by his own act? But
this would seem. to be an addition to infinity;
but infinity can not be more than infinite.
My apology for writing such things is found
in the revolting absurdity of making "the
Almighty One" the substitute for men.

SECTION XVII.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF INTERVENTION.

M1

"R. ARMOUR gives us a number of
illustrations of deliverance by interven
tion which merit brief attention.

I. THE FALLING STONES AND CHILDREN.
He says (pp. 218, 219): "Stones and rub
bish from a lofty scaffolding are seen to com
mence their fall to the ground. A group of
children are beneath. Strong, brave men are
the onlookers. . . . They place a shield over
the defenseless heads, regardless of wounds
and bruises to themselves. When this takes
place no law is violated. Rather the scope and
resources of law are unfolded. Law triumphs
over law, and honors the law over which it
triumphs." (Between the first and last part of this
quotation our author gives us over a page of
matter concerning "the unrelaxibility of law,"
and "modern thought," and other subjects,
which have no vital connection with his illus
tration.) (218)

Illustrations of Intervention. 219
Remarks. — (1) I bring no railing accusa
tion against that scaffolding for permitting
those stones to fall, nor against the stones for
falling, nor against those children for being in
danger, nor against those strong, brave men
for placing a shield over the defenseless, nor
against Mr. Armour for using a fictitious
illustration, for such illustrations are admissi
ble when pertinent real ones are not available,
provided they do not transcend the limits of
possibility. But that against which I do protest is that
our author should attempt to impose upon us
this example as an illustration of his doctrine
of deliverance from penal law by substitution
ary intervention.
It is not difficult to find the intervention,
though it is not quite certain whether Mr.
Armour means us to take the strong, brave
men or the shield for the intervener — the
shield was what literally intervened between
the falling stones and defenseless heads. The
point of extreme difficulty is to find any thing
in the case answering to our author's substi
tution involving double imputation.
(2) If we attempt to find a substitute for
defenseless heads in the shield, we are
promptly put under inhibition by Mr. Ar
mour's law imperatively requiring " volunta-

220 Atonement Reviewed.
t'ariness" in the substitute. Besides, com
mon sense requires us to say that the shield
was a protection to the defenseless heads.
A shield a substitute for heads! Mr. Armour
does not, of course, mean that.
(3) If we attempt to find the substitute in
these strong, brave men, we have the requi
site voluntariness, but the naked, hard facts
utterly disallow any substitution. They did
not take the place of the children, nor did
the children take the place of the men in re
lation to the falling stones — no imputation at
all; not even single, much less double, as the
theory imperatively requires.
(4) Mr. Armour says in this case, " No
law is violated. . . . Law triumphs over
law." It is really difficult to see the harmony
between these statements. It would seem
that if one law triumphs over another, that
one is in some way rather worsted, or crip
pled, or vanquished. How can there be a
triumph without a defeat, a victor without a
vanquished party? It would have been some
relief if Mr. Armour had given us the name
of the triumphant law, and also that of the
untriumphant, or vanquished. It would also
be gratifying to know how, or in what sense,
a law over which another law triumphs can
be a satisfied law?

Illustrations of Intervention. 221
(5) According to the facts in this imaginary
case, these strong, brave men were benefac
tors, not substitutes in any sense — saviors of
the children, if we chose so to express our
selves. These strong men obeyed no law, dis
charged no duty that devolved upon the
children. They simply obeyed law, or dis
charged duty, imposed upon them by divine
laws — duty to God, to the children, and to
themselves. But they did not save by substitution or
equivalent penalty. Nor did Christ ever
save a sinner by any such impractical method.
Substitution, as we have seen, with its inva
riable double imputation, would have killed
outright these strong, brave men unless their
heads had been too hard for those falling
stones. And even in this event substitution
would have failed of its requirements, because
the penalty to which the children were ex
posed was simply death, and nothing short of
death could satisfy the law.
Mr. Armour has wonderful aptitude in
making distinctions where none exist, and of
confounding things rffdically different. To
confound benefaction with substitution is
simply an unpardonable abuse of terms, and
is, withal, an utter abandonment of substitu-

222 Atonement Reviewed.
tion involving double imputation, which is the
essential characteristic of his scheme.
2. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB.
Mr. Armour administers nearly two and a
half pages of rather caustic rebuke to certain
poetic theologists who are wont to temper the
wind to the shorn lamb.
He says (pp. 219, 220): "God tempers the
wind to the shorn lamb? By direct inter
ference with the fierce law that governs the
wintry storm? God tempers the wind to the
shorn lamb ? Sentiment, mere sentiment unsup
ported by a solitary shred of evidence. I beg
pardon of those sweet souls whose philoso
phy of redemption, whose system of theology,
whose creed, beginning and end of it, is sim
ply this: 'God tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb.' I ask, What god? Assuredly not the
God who rules this world. Let there be a
'scientific test,' a test by the thermometer.
On the bleak hill top let the shorn lamb stand
side by side with the unshorn. Ah! your
poetic fancy is driven as chaff before the
wind. Proclaim it in this world, proclaim it
in all worlds. God does not temper the wind
to the shorn lamb. That is Satan's theology,
the same he taught in Eden: ' Ye shall not
surely die.' It is not in accordance with

Illustrations of Intervention. 223
Scripture, with man's experience and obser
vation; it is not simply nonsense, it is a decep
tive and ruinous error. The shepherd who
should accept this as his creed could not be
called ' the good shepherd.' The good shep
herd is not, must not be, a fool."
Remarks. — (1) All this vehement invect
ive against those who express their faith in a
gracious providence by the use of the familiar
proverb, " God tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb," is not only gratuitous, but an unpar
donable injustice.
By taking in a strictly literal sense lan
guage intended by those who use it to be
taken in a tropical sense, Mr. Armour manu
factures " a man of straw," a pure vacuity,
which he finds himself quite able to demolish.
Those who use the proverb do not mean
that the rise and fall of the mercury are de
termined by the amount of wool a lamb may
chance to have, or that God adjusts the tem
perature of the wind to the condition of the
lamb. They rather mean that the condition
of the lamb is adjusted to the temperature of
the wind. They do not mean to assert the
relaxation of law, or the inutility of means, or
any thing of the kind.
The reader may be a little surprised to find

224 Atonement Reviewed.
our author guilty of the identical sin which
he charges against those who use the proverb
which he calls the theology of Satan. He
says (p. 221): "He (the brave shepherd) bat
tles with, and so far as the lamb is concerned,
vanquishes the storm, rescues its victim,
wards off its fierce blasts."
This is in every aspect a more extravagant
and therefore more objectionable expression
than the proverb, " God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb."
According to the proverb, " God tempers
the wind" so far as the shorn lamb is con
cerned. According to our author, " the
brave Shepherd," the Almighty One, battles
with the storm — the storm which is but the
on-going force of his own law sustained by
" infinite power." The proverb says " tem
per the wind to the shorn lamb." Mr. Ar
mour vehemently protests, calls this Satan's
theology, and says "battles with, and van
quishes the storm, rescues its victim, wards
off the fierce blasts." As to terminology, I
somewhat prefer that of the proverb to that
of Mr. Armour. Of course I do not mean
that I prefer Satan to Mr. Armour, but sim
ply prefer his way of putting things — that is,
if he teaches that " God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb."

Illustrations of Intervention. 225
But is it not possible that Mr. Armour is
mistaken when he says of this proverb that it
is " Satan's theology, the same he taught in
Eden?" How does Mr. Armour know this?
Has he had any private communication on the
subject? I myself have learned from a sor
rowful experience that " His Plutonic High
ness " has no great respect for the ninth com
mandment. Our common mother, too, had a
sad experience of the same kind. But I am
indebted to our author for the information
that Satan has a theology, a part of which is
that " God tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb." Satan said to our overcredulous moth
er, "Thou shalt not surely die." Because
this utterance was false, and because Mr. Ar
mour thinks the proverb, " God tempers," etc.,
is false, he therefore feels at liberty to call it
"Satan's theology." Well, if it is Satan's
theology, is it not Mr. Armour's also? The
proverb says God tempers the wind, etc. Mr.
Armour says the Almighty One battles with
the storm, vanquishes the storm, wards off the
fierce blasts of the storm. The reader can
choose between Satan's theology, so called,
and that of Mr. Armour. Happy is he that
condemneth not himself, etc.
(2) But the real point of interest in this
case lies in another direction. Our author set
*5

226 Atonement Reviewed.
out to give us an illustration of deliverance by
substitutionary intervention, but wittingly or
unwittingly blinks the real issue, and gives us
an illustration of deliverance by beneficent in
tervention. Is Mr. Armour unwilling or un
able to see what every body else can not fail to
see, viz.: The radical difference between bene
faction and substitution? He seems determined
by his vehement and dogmatic declarations and
reiterations, to compel his readers to take
leave of common sense, so far at least as to
admit that benefaction and substitution are
identical. He might as well attempt to over
turn the mountains as to blot out this distinc
tion between benefaction and substitution with
its double imputation.
(3) Mr. Armour closes his labored disquisi
tion on the wind and shorn lamb with the fol
lowing sweeping assertion (p. 222): "Every
theory of atonement save that which regards
Christ as our substitute, meeting the full de
mands of law, enduring its penalty, making a
'proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's
justice,' is ruled out at once as fatally, foolish
ly defective, delusive, deceptive."
(4) If our author had said that he is igno
rant as to how atonement could be made
without substitution, his assertion would have
been neither incredible nor arrogant. But

Illustrations of Intervention. 227
what right has he to assume to know all the
possible? Nothing but the contradictory is
impossible with God.
(5) The strength of his assertion lies wholly
in its arrogant dogmatism. Not a particle of
proof is given, or even attempted.
On the contrary it has condemnation writ
ten on its face. Thus "meeting the full de
mands of the law, enduring its penalty." The
law demands obedience, but obedience ex
cludes the possibility of penalty. But penalty
presupposes disobedience. Hence, if Christ
as our substitute met the full demands of the
law, then there could be no penalty to endure.
But our very discriminating author makes him
both meet the full demands of the law and en
dure its penalty, which is clearly impossible.
This has been previously noticed and needs
nothing more.
3. THE WHEEL AND THE DYNAMO MACHINE.
Our author gives two instances of the power
of physical law.
An immense wheel was in rapid motion.
"A lad passing near by it, by a single mis
step, fell against it, and was instantly hurled
sheer across the immense building, and was
taken uo moaning, mangled, bleeding, dy
ing."

228 Atonement Reviewed.
The other example is that of the man who
grasped both rods of the thirty-light dynamo
machine "and was dead."
Mr. Armour seems to think that he is won
derfully enlightening the world on the force
and impartiality of law.
Of course, the boy and the man were killed.
But why? In brief, because they were not
omnipotent, and, therefore, could not vanquish
a force " sustained by infinite power."
Was the wheel or the force or the law by
which it was impelled satisfied when it killed
the lad? or the dynamo machine when it killed
the man? Of course the law was avenged,
and, therefore^ quite satisfied. So the theory.
I hesitate to make the suggestion, the thought
is so preposterous and repulsive withal, but if
Mr. Armour could have put the Almighty One
as a substitute in the place of the boy or the
man, what would have been the consequence?
Mr. Armour, I suppose, and he alone is able
to answer. Mr. Armour's whole scheme of
intervention appears to me in the light of a
hideous caricature, both of our Creator and
his beneficent law. A law whose necessary
penalties are as satisfactory as well as pleas
ing to the Lawgiver as is obedience, is, I
think, not the law of the Father of all our
mercies.

Illustrations ok Intervention. 229
A law which only the "Almighty One " can
fulfill is not the law imposed upon finite creat
ures, nor the law to which Christ was " obe
dient unto death."
Mr. Armour is right in insisting upon the
integrity of law, and on the inevitableness of
penalty to the trangressor. For all good
comes from obedience, and to disobey is to
forfeit, to lose, this good, and this deprivation
of good is the penalty of disobedience. Obe
dience is what the law imperatively requires.
Penalty satisfies nothing, pleases nobody,
repairs no injuries, can not remove its causes,
is itself an evil, and yet is inevitable to the
disobedient, for the simple and all-sufficient
reason that it is impossible for a man to have
and not have the good conditioned upon obe
dience at the same time. A child can not at
the same time have and not have the good
that comes from eating. If it can not eat, of
course it must suffer the consequences of not
eating. Mr. Armour proposes to relieve its suffer
ing by a double process, viz.: By having a
substitute, first to eat for it; secondly, to suffer
its hunger pains in its stead.
If there is any virtue in substitution one of
these processes ought to be sufficient — in fact,
one excludes the other — that is, the eating

230 Atonement Reviewed.
excludes the hunger pains, or takes away
their cause. Hence, for the substitute to eat
and at the same time suffer the pain that
comes from not eating is a sheer impossibility.
The Bible and common sense propose a
different method of procedure. If the child
eats according to the requirements of hygienic
law it can not suffer hunger pains, or the pen
alty of not eating. If it is in a condition that
disables it from eating, it is the merest charla
tanry to have a substitute to eat for it, or to
take its hunger pains. A D.D. only could
propose such a remedy and keep out of the
asylum, and the M.D. who should suggest
such a remedy would be justly deemed, not a
quack, but a madman. The hunger law is
inexorable in its demands. It can not be ab
rogated or relaxed; nor can its penalties be
avoided. But the only possible method of
removing the penalty, or the hunger pains, is
to gratify the hunger appetite. If the child
can not eat of itself, then help it to eat — not
by eating what it ought to eat, but by putting
it in a condition to eat itself.
The application of these common sense
truths is so obvious that I need not stay to
make it.
To cure a patient is to relieve him of the
pain which is the complement of his disease.

Illustrations of Intervention. 231
No divine law requires penalty, but obedience,
and the penalty is only the complement of
disobedience. To restore the disobedient to
obedience is to satisfy law, or nature, or God,
and also to remove the penalty. While the
sinner is in a state of disobedience he suffers
the penalty or consequence of his disobedi
ence himself, and no substitute is possible;
just as the sick man suffers the pain of his
disease, which no substitute can suffer in his
stead. Whatever may be done for one or the
other is done in the way of benefaction, and
not in the way of substitution with its im
practicable double imputation.
When the sinner is restored to obedience,
and is enabled to love God, which no one can
do in his stead, then there is no penalty to
bear, for obedience excludes penalty. This is
what the blessed, loving Christ does for us —
he helps miserable sinners back into a state of
obedience, and sustains them in that state,
and hence their penalties subside, as do effects
when their causes are removed.

SECTION XVIII.

SCIENTIFIC PRETENSIONS.
MR. ARMOUR'S object in "Atonement
and Law" seems to be not to prove
atonement by substitution the only possible
method of atonement, but assuming this to be
an established fact, his chief design seems to
be to relieve this doctrine of the reproach of
being the "Great Exception" to the regular
on-going of the world.
It is flatly alleged by skeptics, and generally
admitted, that atonement by substitution is
exceptional to the ordinary course of things
— unique, without a parallel in nature.
Mr. Armour, feeling this to be a reproach
to Christianity, formed the laudable purpose
of wiping it out by showing that atonement
rests on the impregnable foundation of im
mutable law, and incapable of defense by
strictly scientific methods.
Certainly every lover of Christianity should
commend his praiseworthy endeavor. If suc
cessful in the achievement of his noble end he
(232)

Scientific Pretensions. 233
merits high commendations. If unsuccess
ful he ought to be respected for his good in
tentions, and his failure attributed, not to his
want of ability, but to the impracticability of
his method. Has he achieved success? Has
he given us an atonement capable of defense
on scientific grounds? Having deliberately
reconnoitered the field, he found three things
which he deemed necessary to establish — the
identity of sin and debt, moral law in com
mandment only, and substitution a normal pro
vision of law:
1. Sin is debt, though the greatest of all
debts, which no human resources can possi
bly pay, still it is strictly and only debt.
What will scientists have to say of this?
Will their skepticism be diminished or in
creased? The latter, I feel sure, will be the
result. 2. Moral law in commandment only. This
is a vital strategic point. If this can not be
established — if it can not be proved that law
is wholly objective, and in no sense subjective
— then substitution involving double imputa
tion becomes simply impossible, and hence,
substitutionary atonement on scientific grounds
must be an inglorious failure. We have pre
viously seen with what tenacity of purpose,
and adroitness too, Mr. Armour attempts to

234 Atonement Reviewed.
identify law in commandment, or law from
without, and law written on the heart, or law
from within.
We have also seen that in this persistent
effort to blur a distinction, which the Bible
clearly and in divers forms recognizes, our
author dispenses with the moral sense, or con
science proper, and substitutes fear, or the
apprehension of evil from without.
Certainly Mr. Armour has a conscience,
but his philosophy has none. True he gives
us the name, but it is a pure sham, a wolf in
sheep's clothing. Would not eagle-eyed sci
entists be astonished beyond measure to find
something in the realm, either of matter or
of mind, that is free, utterly free, from con
created law? something in no sense a law
unto itself? wholly under the dominion of law
in commandment, or from without. Suppose
no one should choose to put this nondescript
under law in commandment, then what? I
suspect what Mr. Armour would say. But
the point of interest at present is what will
scientists, for whose special interest he seems
to write, have to say?
3. Substitution a normal provision of law.
In defense of this position, Mr. Armour
puts forth all his wonderful resources of strat
egy, learning, and logic. His inventive pow-

Scientific Pretensions. 235
er is marvelous, his achievements fascinating
and sparkling, his courage little less than
sublime. It seems cruel, but fortune does not
always favor the brave. Napoleon had his
Waterloo. To fail here was to lose all. Mr.
Armour failed only because he attempted the
impossible — that is, to prove substitution a
normal provision of law. The proposition is
itself incapable of proof — can be proved nei
ther metaphysically nor by any other method.
We have seen that substitution is generally,
perhaps always, even in the most trivial hu
man affairs, unjust, and that in the Great
Atonement it is utterly impossible in its con
ditions, Mr. Armour himself specifying these
conditions. Granting every thing he asks, he can prove
substitution only by involving himself in poly
theism, or attributing to the Divine Being two
wills — one giving law, and the other obeying
the precept and suffering the penalty of that
law in the place of men.
Now, can any scheme of atonement be
properly accounted scientific which impera
tively requires us to attribute to the Godhead
more than one omnipotent will? If scientific
minds admit the existence of one Almighty
will at all, does not more than one such will
appear to them an impossible conceit?

236 Atonement Reviewed.
Again, as we have seen, Mr. Armour's
substitution is impossible in its conditions —
impossible for the want of an adequate sub
stitute. Now, can any thing be truly scien
tific which is impossible in its conditions, or
for any other reasons?
That the theory is incapable of defense on
scientific grounds might be shown in various
other ways, but enough has been said to sat
isfy an unprejudiced mind.
Mr. Armour, so far from proving substitu
tion normal in moral law, has proved, if he
has proved any thing, that moral law itself is
abnormal. For according to the theory,
causes and their effects may not only be sev
ered, but the effects of adverse causes may
be interchanged, and one substituted for an
other. Thus one man may eat and another
be nourished; one man may sleep and anoth
er be refreshed; one man may obey law and
another receive the good that is the effect of
that obedience. But the abnormality is
double. One man may suffer hunger pains,
and by the endurance of these pains another
man's hunger pains may be relieved; one
man may suffer all the pains of insomnia, and
another, on this account, be relieved of such
pains. One man may suffer the penalty of

Scientific Pretensions. 237
disobedience, and another thereby made to
enjoy the reward of obedience.
If such is the character of moral law, then
the law is itself abnormal, or is a lawless law,
not the divinely ordained rule of order, but
of confusion.
If substitution is capable of defense before
the bar of reason, and on scientific grounds,
then there is manifestly nothing unreasonable
or unscientific, and the less we have of it the
better. I reject atonement by substitution with
double imputation in toto, as an assumption
alike contrary to reason and to the Bible.
But if we must have it, then I think the new
wine is worse than the old, and that Mr. Ar
mour has rendered a positive disservice to
the cause of Christianity by his futile attempts
to free atonement from the reproach of being
the " Great Exception," for the sufficient reason
that it is better to admit a fault than to at
tempt to justify it — better to admit the atone
ment to be abnormal in law than to make the
law itself abnormal. Thinking and scientific
men might reverently accept the first as a
solemn mystery, but the latter I think will by
such be generally rejected as an absurdity.
But in the good providence of our gracious
and all-wise heavenly Father good — great

238 Atonement Reviewed.
good — may come from Mr. Armour's able
effort to establish substitution on scientific
grounds. He has asserted the substitutionary
and penal theory, if not with more consisten
cy, yet in such a manner as to expose more
clearly its inherent absurdities and weakness
than any of his predecessors known to me.
The natural consequence will be that many
that have hitherto been measurably satisfied
with the penal theory will be stimulated to a
more thorough investigation. Such investiga
tion, I am quite confident, will result in a re
jection of the whole scheme as unscriptural
and impossible, and the adoption of something
wholly different and better — something, the
natural tendencies of which will be to draw
men to the cross rather than to drive them
from it.
As to the effect of Mr. Armour's book
upon scientists skeptically inclined it will, I
presume, be evil, and only evil. That such
will be the result is clearly indicated by the
following quotation from " Philosophy of Re
ligion," by Herman Lotze, whose reputation
as a profound thinker and Christian scientist
is unsurpassed by that of any other name of
this century.
He says (p. 151): "It is impossible to
speak of God's honor as receiving ' satisfac-

Scientific Pretensions. 239
tion' through the sacrificial death of a single
person for the injury done it by the sin of
man. For such a view, aside from its some
what crude conception of God, is based upon
the altogether impossible conception of a
solidaric unity of the human race, and of the
possibility of a transfer of its guilt and obliga
tion to a single representative."
If such a protest against penal satisfaction
by a substitute comes from a profound Chris
tian scientist, what may we not expect from
non-christian scientists?

APPENDIX.

Lebanon, Tenn., April 26, 1SS6.
Dr. S. G. Burney: — We, the undersigned, have been ap
pointed by a unanimous vote of the senior class in the Theolog
ical School of Cumberland University to represent to you our
wishes concerning your Review of "Atonement and Law," by
Rev. John M. Armour, which you have read before us. Having
previously studied carefully your theory of the atonement, and
having read Mr. Armour's book on the subject, we were some
what curious as to how you would deal with his arguments,
which to some minds appear very forcible. We, however, felt
quite sure that when you had carefully analyzed them and
traced them to their ultimate conclusions, they Mould be found,
in the main, not only without foundation, but to involve contra
dictions and absurdities sufficient to prove their falsity. We
have not been disappointed. Your analyses are so clear and
your refutations so complete that we believe the pviblication of
the Review would serve greatly to quicken thought, encourage
investigation, and to establish in the minds of many the true
doctrine on this great subject. Therefore, we hereby request
that it be given to the Church and the world in book form as
soon as practicable.
Respectfully, T. A. Cowan,
C. H. Talley,
R. A. Cody,
Cumberland University. Committee.
Class of 1886. — Bachelor of Divinity.
Winstead Paine Bone, George Gary Hudson,
Joe W. Caldwell,. James A. Longbottom,
Thompson A. Cowan, Ewing L. Mc Williams,
Eoberi A. Cody, James Henry Miller,
James. Douglas Gold, John Henr* Miller,
Lemuel J. Hawkins, Reuben Thomas Phillips,
James Robert Henry, Morton E. Pratiier,
John Yakt Stephens, Campbell' H. Talley,
Charles B. Wellborn, Thomas Noel Williams,
Isaac n. Yokley.
In the foregoing request the Junior class concurred. The
names are as follows :
Robert Franci3 Adair, FungEwura Delzell,
La Lande Bussle Bare, Edward E, Morris,
John Douglass Black, Henry Franklin Smith,
John B. .Cross, John Calvin Talley,
John Robersoh Walker, William Heney Jones.
(240)

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