Robert Campbell Moberly on the Meaning of the Atonement
"This penitence, this marvelous possibility, which so transcends, yet interprets, we might almost say constitutes the Christian experience; this penitence which is almost another word for spiritual consciousness, do we not recognize it as at once as more than humanly profound and tranquilizing? As beautiful almost beyond all experience of beauty? As powerful, even to the shattering of the most terrible powers?
The inversion of natural history- moral recovery- re-identifying of the sinner's spirit with holiness; so that he can at all really hate what really was the old self, and cling, through voluntary pain, to a real contradiction of the self; the touching beauty, which as beauty is unsurpassed, the tremendous spiritual and spiritually uplifting force, of the penitence of countless souls- men and women, boys and girls- since the Kingdom of Christ began: what it is? This impossibility in them, which is nevertheless a fact? This humiliation, which is so exquisite a grace? This weakness confessed, which is so paradoxically sovereign in power? This upon earth, which is incommensurate with earth?"
posted by MM at 6:56 AM
<< Home