The  Vicarious  Sacrifice  287

the  innocent  Redeemer  sufifered  for  the  guilty,  the  noble
words  of  Dr.  Dale  may  be  quoted.  ''  It  is  beautiful  and
gracious/'  he  says, ''  to  dismiss  our  resentment  against  those
who  have  sinned ;  it  is  more  beautiful  and  more  gracious
freely  to  suffer  for  them.  Who  shall  dare  to  deny  to
God — in  the  name  of  justice — the  highest  form  of  good-
ness that  is  possible  to  man  ?  If,  by  enduring  death  for  us,
the  Son  of  God,  in  whom  and  through  whom  the  human
race  is  related  to  the  Eternal  Father,  can  enable  the  divine
mercy  to  liberate  men  from  the  awful  sense  of  guilt,  and  from
the  loss  and  penalty  which  by  the  principles  of  the  moral
order  of  the  universe  they  have  incurred  by  sin,  who  shall
venture  to  tell  Him  that  divine  justice  forbids  the  sacri-
fice, and  that  human  misery  cannot  accept  the  redemption
which  the  sacrifice  achieves  ?  He,  too,  will  answer,  that
love  is  diviner  than  justice,  and  that  He  suffers  gladly  if
only  the  guilty  may  be  saved."  ^  This  is,  in  effect,  to
say  what  our  preceding  discussion  has  made  clear — that
ordinary  retributive  justice  is  both  an  insufficient  and  an
unsatisfactory  attribute  for  the  explanation  of  the  Atone-
ment, which  has  to  do  with  higher,  broader,  and  deeper
interests  than  those  of  justice,  though,  of  course,  those
interests  are  not  out  of  harmony  with  justice.  Substi-
tution cannot  be  brought  under  the  terms  of  retributive
justice,  the  very  watchword  of  which  is  Buum  euiqiu ;  yet
this  is  not  to  pronounce  substitution  impossible,  but
simply  to  force  us  to  seek  the  explanation  of  it  in  a
realm  in  which  judicial  interests  are  not  supreme.^     And,

^  Discourses  on  Christian  Doctrine^  p.  260.
