become the real Redeemer of sinful humanity and, as such, the means of atonement for sin, is in itself the most prodigous moral work and struggle. Being accomplished in a sinful world it is an offering for sin and is moreover a painful and peculiar suffering, because, according to the nature of the case, it is completed as a work determined by the sin of man and historically prompted and accomplished by the hatred of man toward goodness and God, toward his truth, love, and holiness.

This atoning self-offering of the Redeemer is essentially the work of his entire life, so that his life is one grand act of selfoffering to God and for humanity. Indeed it could not be a real and true sin-offering at all if only a moral element came forward in it which were no element of such an offering. But the self-offering of the Redeemer has a really redemptive power which is grounded in the fact that it is a real self-offering, that is, an absolute and perfectly complete giving up of his rightful possession to God and for man,-for only through this is he really the Redeemer. This self-offering is rendered absolute and complete only through the giving up of his physical life, through and in his death.

It is in his death that his sanctification or qualification to be the Redeemer is first really and clearly attained. Hence it is essentially and specifically his death in which the redemptive power of his life chiefly lies and it is really through his death that his whole life first becomes an atonement for our sin. Had he not stood the test of death; that is, had he not absolutely completed his union with God and humanity, then would his whole life have been a vain attempt at atonement for the sins of humanity. But through his endurance of this test, every element of his life becomes what it was to be and ought to be, really redemptive.

It is accordingly something more than an accident that of old it was attempted to accomplish atonement for sin specifically through offerings and from this presupposition it has resulted that sin can be atoned for only by the sin-offering. (Heb. ix. 22). It is not therefore from a mere natural accommodation to the ideas generally prevalent at its entrance into the world, that Christianity connects the idea of atonement for sin with that of the offering and bases the atonement directly upon the death of

the Redeemer. All this is done from a necessity grounded in the nature of the case. As soon as we once see that redemption, and specially atonement for sin, can only really be accomplished by a moral work, then should we also perceive and understand that this work can only be an offering, and indeed the only real offering-self-offering; for this self-offering, the giving of himself in unconditioned, perfectly self-denying love to God and humanity, is the absolutely great, the only perfectly complete human moral work. It is matter of experience that man only comes to moral elevation and completeness in the measure in which his life is full of offering-self-offering to God and man. Surely the grandest thing in human life is this self-giving, if only the true idea of it is understood.

§ 53. The struggle of Jesus with Satan and his kingdom. If in the sense explained, the whole life-work of the Redeemer is that work through which he has accomplished the atonement for the sin of humanity, then his conflict with Satan also belongs under this head as a particular side of that work. That he should victoriously sustain that conflict was a demand really included in his qualification for the Redeemer. In consequence of sin there exists between natural humanity and the kingdom of evil spirits a real connection which is grounded in the cosmical position of that kingdom. By its means the evil spiritworld reaches with its activity the world of man and through the sinfulness of the world finds access to it. Thus between them a relation of communion is established which is so close that the demon-world possesses in sinful humanity a kingdom of darkness and its princes. Into this kingdom of evil Jesus is placed in order to prepare himself to be the Redeemer. Accordingly he also stands within the sphere of the influences of the demons and their prince and is exposed to the assaults of Satan. That he should do this belongs essentially to the conditions of his earthly, human existence into which he must enter, to the human destiny which he must perfectly assume. But he undertakes this to conquer. Even on the particular side under consideration, he must prove himself the Lord if he is to be the Redeemer of sinful humanity. Only in case he is able to break through the hindrance to his moral

development which he met in the attacks of Satan and to conquer even this invisible foe; only in case he is fitted for this, can he be prepared to accomplish the actual removal of sin in humanity, only when he accomplishes this is he qualified to be the Redeemer and able as such, at the same time, to atone for the sin of humanity.

§ 54. The substitution of Jesus.

According to what has been said a substitution of the Redeemer for us certainly takes place in his work as the highpriest who atones for our sins. He, the Holy One, completes the offering in atonement for sin instead of the sinners to whom it belonged but who were unable to present it. He perfects the necessary conditions of our salvation which we were not able to fulfill. This he does not in the sense that he has done anything which has for himself no aim and no significance. For that whereby he completes the atonement for our sins is his own personal attainment to completeness which he must accomplish for himself and which indeed was even the express task of his calling. Notwithstanding he completes, at the same time, a work which it belongs to us to complete but for which we are not equal. He stands forth in his priestly work as the One who has both the perfect will and power to draw all individual men to himself and thereby to make them like himself in holiness, the One by whose power the old natural race is regenerated into holy spirituality and who is therefore the real representative of the collective human race and of each particular member of that race now renewed from a material to a spiritual existence. So far as his high-priestly work is also really a suffering, it is still to be spoken of in a peculiar sense as a substitution.

That his moral and religious life-work was at the same time a suffering, an experience of evil, did not have its ground in himself, the absolutely Sinless, but only in the sinfulness of the world in which he must solve his problem of life and for which he did solve it. The evil with which he came into conflict did not touch him at all in and of itself; it merely belonged to the course of the world which had incurred it through its sin. But still he shares with the world its evil and indeed in such a way

that through his participation in it he, at the same time, takes it away. For his suffering of evil is at the same time a conquering of sin and hence a putting away of evil which is the consequence and penalty of sin. The substitution of the Redeemer which takes place in his relation to evil is still more peculiar because by virtue of his sympathy with the sinful world he felt the suffering which came upon him, and which was entirely foreign to him personally as it existed in the world's con. sciousness to which it peculiarly belonged-as the penalty of sin. So has the Redeemer suffered in our stead the penalties of our sins and as veritable sin-penalties,-only not as his own punishment. The absolute clearness of his own self-consciousness must not be dimmed through his absolute sympathy with us, if he is to perfectly preserve his normal moral life, that is, if he is to be the Redeemer. But this clear self-consciousness would have been dimmed had he felt our sin as his own and the suffering of our punishment as his own punishment; if he had felt the wrath of God for sin against himself. But the necessary presupposition of sympathy with another is that he who feels the sympathy distinguishes himself and his condition from him with whom he sympathises and his condition. Now of such a one it must certainly be said that he suffers vicariously. For by virtue of his position in the human community, every individual participates in the sum of evil which is placed upon the community through the total mass of the sin of all. Accordingly he participates in evil whose cause he can not refer at all to his own individual sin. And since every morally right endurance of evil, especially of social evil, is at the same time, at least partially, a removal of evil, it follows that every individual through his suffering in many ways takes away from others evil which otherwise they must have suffered and that rightfully as penalties for their sins. But just here we reach a point in which an absolutely essential difference presents itself in this respect between the Redeemer and every other. Our suffering for others in such a way as thereby to conquer evil. and in some measure to take it away from them is conditioned upon the morally right endurance of evil; for in the morally unjust suffering we rather beget new, common evil and thus multiply the evil which affects others not directly on their own

account. For that morally right bearing of evil we are however made capable only by our personal connection with the Redeemer through grace; and even in this case we attain to it only relatively.

The Redeemer therefore suffers the evil that falls upon him and which in itself is foreign to him in an absolutely guiltless manner so that he shares it perfectly with us:-he shares it with us in such a manner that his suffering of it is at the same time a removal of it. The same does not hold true however in all these respects. Outside of our connection with him that result does not take place at all; so far as we stand in real connection with him, it still takes place in us only relatively. Moreover, this suffering of one for another in our relation to each other is thoroughly reciprocal; in the relation between Christ and us it falls absolutely on the side of Christ. And so the suffering of the Redeemer remains in a wholly peculiar sense, vicarious.

§ 55. The merit of the Redeemer.

Finally the high-priestly work of the Redeemer which atonest for the sins of the world, establishes an absolute merit (not perhaps in his relation to God, but) in his relation to us, the members of the old, natural humanity. The idea of merit is just this: that a product of our universal discipline, as such, is a universal, worthy instrument for the human personality in its work at the solution of the moral task-considered from the religious point of view, a sacrament—an absolutely commonly useful, holy thing.

This merit conceived of in a religious manner as the product of the universal religious discipline is a universal organ of the activity of God in the world for its sanctification. Since the Redeemer atones for the sins of the world by preparing himself to be the Redeemer, that is, by making himself, his person, and his whole life a perfectly appropriate and universal instrument for the solution of the religious, moral problem-yes, the only instrument in this relation by virtue of which all other instruments have their applicability,-by making himself an absolutely primary sacrament (whereby alone there are and can be really specially holy things or sacraments), he has obtained