your lives clean.

*****

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

IN an art collection in Boston there is a god--a redeemer--the best
illustration I have ever seen of the vicarious atonement theory. It is
a perfect representation of the agony endured by a helpless and innocent
being in order to relieve the guilty of their guilt. This god was
captured in Central Africa before his mission was complete, and there is
still suffering-space upon his body unused.

It is a wooden image of some frightful beast, and it is represented as
suffering the most intense physical agony. Nails are driven into its
head, body, legs, and feet. Each wrongdoer who wanted to relieve himself
of his own guilt drove a nail, a tack, a brad, or a spike into the flesh
of his god. The god suffered the pain; the man escaped the punishment.
He cast his burdens on his god, and went on his way rejoicing. Here is
vicarious atonement in all its pristine glory. The god is writhing
and distorted with pain; the criminal has relieved himself of further
responsibility, and his faith has made him whole. His sins are forgiven,
and his god will assume his load.

It is curious to examine the various illustrations of human nature as
represented by the size and shape of the nails. A sensitive man had
committed a trifling offence, and he drove a great spike into the head
of the god. A thick-skinned criminal inserted a small tack where it
would do the least harm--in the hoof. An honest, or an egotistic
penitent drove his nail in where it stands out prominently; while the
secretive devotee placed his among a mass of others of long standing and
inconspicuous location.

One day I stood with a friend looking at this god. My friend, who was a
devout believer in the vicarious theory of justification and punishment
as explained _away_ by the ethical divines of Boston, was unable to see
anything but the most horrible brutality and willingness to inflict
pain on the part of these African devotees, and was equally unable to
recognize the same principle when applied to orthodoxy. She said, "Is it
not horrible, the ignorance and superstition of these poor people? What
a vast field of labor our missionaries have."

To her the idea of justification by faith in a suffering god meant only
superstition and brutality when plainly illustrated in somebody else's
religion; but the same idea, the same morality, the same justice, she
thought beautiful when applied to Christianity.

I said,