AS typical of the crude, semi-pagan, rationalistic conceptions of the Cross of Christ formed in the spiritually-untaught sin-deluded minds of present-day Modernists, we quote the following from the weekly sermonette in “The Daily Telegraph” of 29th March, 1941, by the Rev. L. B. Ashby, who has succeeded Rev. Dr. Alington, Dean of Durham, as the writer of this feature. Our chief reason for quoting this God-dishonouring un-Scriptural statement is to draw attention to what is the most popular Modernist view held on this solemn subject. It is the view most extensively proclaimed in most pulpits, nominally Protestant, from John O’ Groats to Lands End for the past fifty years. It is worse than lamentable that this false view, of the most important subject that can occupy human attention, is presented to the thousands of readers of one of Britain’s most important daily newspapers. The fact that this minister, who owes his ordination and livelihood, to his having signed the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England as his confession of faith, can thus write and preach without being disciplined, shows not only the degraded depths of treachery, hypocrisy, deceit, and duplicity, to which Modernism has brought pulpit morality in Britain, but also the Laodicean, criminal indifference of professed Evangelicals who allow this glaring inconsistency to go undisciplined: “The Cross has only one real significance. It is the symbol of giving. Crude and semi-pagan ideas about Christ having died to save mankind from the wrath of an angry God are happily passing away, though not yet, alas, entirely dead. The real reason why Christ went to Calvary’s Cross is coming to be better understood. We see that ‘He offered Himself’ to show us the way, to throw down a challenge to us, to summon us to follow Him along the same road of self-sacrifice for the sake of others, to make giving and not getting, the law of life.” The foregoing statements are just a piece of sheer paganism, and rank hypocrisy.
We need not occupy space with Scriptural quotations to show the hollow hypocrisy of the writer’s views, as the whole Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, contradicts them, but the following may suffice: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”; “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”; “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust”; “And he is the propitiation for our sins”; “Without shedding of blood is no remission”; and “He shall save His people from their sins.” The fact of the matter is this Modernist preacher was never supernaturally convinced by the Holy Spirit of his sins, and therefore he never perceived the necessity of a vicarious atoning sacrifice by the eternal Son of God in our nature.
In contrast to the foregoing views of “a blind leader of the blind” it is refreshing and spiritually edifying to turn to the following quotation from the late godly, scholarly, and intellectually brilliant American theologian, Rev. Dr. James Henley Thornwell: “The plan of redemption, in its conception and execution, is a sublime commentary upon the sacredness and supremacy of right, which, while it reveals the ineffable enormity of sin, presents the character of God in such an aspect of venerable grandeur that Holiness becomes awful and majestic, and we insensibly adore under the moral impression which it makes. He that stands beneath the Cross and understands the scene does not sin; not because there is a Hell beneath him, or an angry God above him, but because Holiness is felt to reign there—the ground on which he treads is sacred, the glory of the Lord encircles him, and, like Moses, he must remove the shoes from his feet. The Cross is a venerable spot. I love to linger around it, not merely that I may read my title to everlasting life, but that I may study the greatness of God. I use the term advisedly. God never appears to be so truly great, so intensely holy, as when, from the pure energy of principle, He gives Himself in the Person of His Son, to die, rather than that His character should be impunged. Who dares prevaricate with moral distinctions and talk of death as a greater evil than dishonour, when God the mighty Maker, died rather than that truth or justice should be compromised? Who, at the foot of Calvary, can pronounce sin to be a slight matter? Here, then, lies the most impressive sanction of revelation. Not content to promulgate the Law with absolute certainty, to put under tribute the whole resources of the invisible world, to lay its hand upon Eternity, and make Heaven and Hell its ministers, it rises yet higher and seeks to impress us with a subduing sense of the sacredness of right—to make us feel how awful goodness is, it reveals its inherent greatness, unveils its ineffable glory. It does not describe it, but shows it; and we return from the Cross with emotions similar to those of Moses when the name of the Lord was proclaimed, and the goodness of the Lord passed before him in the cleft of the rock. It is the plan of redemption which crowns the ethical teachings of the Bible. The lesson is sealed at the Cross, there, and there only, do we shudder at sin for its own sake, and reverence right for itself.”