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THE KING’S BUSINESS any pretensions to Biblical scholarship, and any familiarity with the views and exegetical methods of some of the groups named, could have written the words that Dr. Shailer Mathews has here written except in a veritable frenzy of theological ire and bitterness. He evidently did not stop to find out what were the exegetical methods employed by the various groups mentioned but simply piled up such names as occurred to him as he thought had a bad smell. It is not our purpose at this time to enter into a general criticism of Dr. Shailer Mathews article. Wc may do that at some future time, if it seems worth while/ The second amazing fact about The Constructive Quarterly (in view of its published platform and avowed purpose) is, that when R,ev. Dr. James M. Gray, Dean of the Moody Bible Institute, wrote a courteous, calm, temperate, but convincing statement of the other side, the editor of The Constructive Quarterly refused to print it on the ground that it was “polemical.” It is evident that The Constructive Quarterly has not the slightest intention of living up to its program or pledges, and furthermore that anything, no matter how polemical, unfair and untrue may find a place in the pages of The Con structive Quarterly, provided only it is directed against the conservative posi tion, but that nothing can hope for fair treatment provided it'is conservative and able. We do not regret that Dr. Gray’s article was refused for we have reason for believing that it will be published through a channel that wifi assure for it a far wider reading than it could ever have hoped for through the medium of the so-called “Constructive” Quarterly. Did Christ Bear Our Penalty? A FRIEND asks a word on Evman Abbott’s “Letter” in The Outlook, of May 24,^which denies that Christ’s death was penal, and that the Bible teaches remission of penalty or punishment,” and deliverance from “the wrath of an angry God.” Doctor Abbott’s opinion on literature arid current conditions is good but on mysteries of redemption—worthless. His repeated “I do not believe,” “I cannot believe,” need not affect us. The Bible is a plain man s book, of no private interpretation.” He may trust his version as attested by the combined scholarship of the day; “to the law and to the testi- moriy!” “The phrase,” the doctor says, “ ‘remission of penalty or punishment’ never occurs.” True literally, but false exegetically. “Sin” (John 1 -29), “wages” (Rom. 6:23), “curse” (Gal. 3:13), “chastisement” (Isa. 53:5), mean penalty, nothing less; and may be so translated. To “bear sin” is to bear its punishment. One little word cancels both our doctor’s denials: “Being now justified by his blood,.we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Rom. 5:9). To justify by blood can be but to exact the death penalty either of the culprit or his substitute. The Bible is saturated with terms of law all meaningless outside the courts. To justify is a judicial, not paternal, act. This is the age-long “faith of the Church,” and it is in the highest degree improbable that she should be in error, after 19 centuries of controversial scrutiny of Scripture, on so vital a point, waiting the judgment of the editor of The Outlook. Our judicial intuitions must be derived from Him who made us in his image, and, since the stream cannot rise above its source, God must be the righteous Judge of the moral order and cannot indulge His paternal pity by waiving the just sentence ' and penalty of His broken law, but will even by Christ, visit “punishment” with Concluded on page 498
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