Vicarious atonement

“ There is in the moral world, as in the physical, the absolute and perfect relation of cause and effect. For this reason, the atonement becomes an impossibility. Others may suffer by your crime, but their suffering cannot discharge you; it simply increases your guilt and adds to your burden. ”

“ The consequences of my sin, moreover, are rendered less terrible by virtues not my own. I am literally saved from penalties because another pays the penalty for me. The atonement, and what it accomplished for man, were therefore a sublime summing up as it were of what sublime men have to do for their race; an exemplification, rather than a contradiction, of Nature herself, as we know her in our own experience.
Now, all this was really intended as a defence of the atonement; but the President heard me that Sunday, and on the Monday he called me into his room. ”

“ For the protection of a woman who has committed Heaven knows what offense against morality. If this crime were to be proved against me, what on earth would become of me? For years I have endeavored to atone for my sin against society by treating wrong-doers brought before me with the strictest and most unflinching severity. Would Society be grateful for this—Would it even take heed of it? No; my atonement would go for nothing—absolutely nothing. Ah! this is a merciless world, and one in which penitence is taken no account of. But have a care, Mrs. Van Brugh, I’ll bide my time. ”

“ The sinner cannot save himself. By his own deed he has banished himself to the hell of the irrevocable. If there is to be atonement which shall reconcile the traitor to his own deed and the community to the act of treachery against it, an atonement stated in purely human terms, it must be an "objective" atonement, not merely one of moral influence upon the traitor. ”

“ I know it is difficult—nay, almost impossible, to practise this forbearance towards a bad temper, when not allied to a generous heart—when no atonement is afterwards offered for the pain which has been given, and when no evidence exists of the offender being so much as conscious of deserving blame. ”

“ Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of making atonement, in Helena’s nature. ”

“ Her face remained unmoved. "What shall I say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "If he really suffers, the punishment is only just. What did my mother not suffer on his account! And I!"
"But can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "All, Victorine?"
"Perhaps," she answered. "But if not all, then the most, so much that I will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. Still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! And is my guilt greater than his? And has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?" ”

“ Your hands are full of blood. Wash you; make you clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." And He tells them that if they will put away the evil of their doings from before the Lord, "though their sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." This result comes, not from expiation, or an atonement, but by at-one-ment arrived at by a changed life where evil is forever put away. To use the word " atonement" is to pervert the meaning of Scripture. ”

“ Jural feelings are principally feelings of indignation as when an injustice is experienced by an individual, a feeling of fear as when an individual is affected by an inclination to do wrong, a feeling of penitence as when the individual has committed a wrong. With the feeling of indignation is joined a desire for vengeance, with the feeling of penitence a desire of atonement, the former tending towards an act of vengeance and the latter towards an act of expiation. ”

“ With a vindictive person we justify his resentment and anger; we justify his guilt in his mind, by countenancing the justice of his accusations; we spare his passion in exaggerating the injury and fault of his enemy. ”

“ It is equally irrelevant to argue that the atonement may be said to be universal, because it contains enough to save the whole world, if they would or could embrace it, and it is only their excessive depravity which renders it impossible for them to receive the atonement. ”

“ It is necessary that the law which demands atonement, in order that its transgressor may be spared, should itself be perfect, else the fault would in part at least rest with the Law-giver, and not wholly with the sinner. Hence, the atonement when made does not take away the broken law, for that is perfect, but is expressly designed to take away the guilt of the transgressor. [116] Let it be remembered then that the fourth commandment is one of the ten precepts of God’s broken law ”

“ It seemed as if all the disguises of vice were thrown off at once, and that iniquity stood forth in its own true and glaring livery. I do not believe that the heart can ever experience a ruder shock than when an unfledged criminal first hears himself welcomed into the “Masonry” of guilt. To be claimed by such associates as a fellow-laborer, to be received as one of the brethren into the guild of vice, is really an awful blow to one's self-esteem and respect ”

“ For the wretch who is doomed to go through the world bearing a personal jealousy or a personal malignity, which renders him incapable of doing justice, and studious of misrepresentation, I can only feel pity, and were it possible to feel revengeful, could consign him to no worse punishment than that of his own tormentors, the vipers nursed in his own breast. ”

“ Amazed, too, at the crimson blood that trickled down his fingers.
"It is still more horrible," said the Angel when the Vicar had explained the artificial nature of the thing." If I had seen the man who put this silly-cruel stuff there to hurt little children, I know I should have tried to inflict pain upon him. I have never felt like this before. I am indeed becoming tainted and coloured altogether by the wickedness of this world.
"To think, too, that you men should be so foolish as to combine to uphold a law that lets a man do such spiteful things. ”

“ Complete innocence is never so jealous or so resentful as is the half-innocence in which lurks a hint of self-accusation, a suspicion of actual guilt. He had stood ready, with a kind of fierce and proud submission, to accept such blame as could be rightly laid at his door, but this very attitude of partial contrition flamed into anger the moment the scale was tipped too far in his disfavour. ”

“ Had we this fellow at the Tower, a few turns of the rack would tear a confession from his craven soul. But why should we need his word for his own guilt? You have seen, my lords, you have heard! How say you, fair son? Is the man guilty? ”

“ With the entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the fatal beam begins to attend—not on himself, but on the object of his hate. At every new temptation, it is there, stronger and blacker yet, trying to terrify him. When she defies or threatens him, the scaffold seems to be her strength and “vantage ground”. ”

“ There is something in this life of yours⸻ Your care for me! I thought there was nothing beautiful at all in life⸻"
"And I have betrayed you!" said the Vicar, with a sudden wave of remorse. "Why did I not face them all—say, 'This is the best of life'? ”

“ If Wiggins has ever committed any crimes before, this will only aggravate his guilt, and make his punishment the worse.”
At this Mrs. Dunbar stared at Edith with the same horror in her eyes which Wiggins had lately shown.
“Crime?” she repeated. “Guilt? Punishment? Oh, Heavens! Has it come to this? This is terrible. Girl,” she continued, with a frown, “you don't know the dreadful nature of those words. You are a marplot. You have come home to ruin every thing. ”

“ Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus confounded in the toils that were deliberately spread for him and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another—this man, thus ruined and undone and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender, [Pg 618] while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? ”

“ To no man in these days, could there be a doubt even for a moment—however great the sin of swearing such an oath! No one in these days, knowing and repenting of the crime, would hesitate a moment, or fancy himself bound, because he had committed one vile sin in pledging himself thus to guilt, to rush on deeper yet into the perpetration of wickedness. ”

“ When he gives the first slight assent to a wrong tendency, or a vicious resolution, he resembles the shepherd's boy, who, unconscious of the consequences that followed, made the first small channel in the earth with his naked foot. The vice or the passion will enlarge itself by degrees until all power of resistance is removed; and the heart becomes a victim to the impetuosity of an evil principle to which no assent of the will ever should have been given. ”

“ And who knows what incessant, compulsory meditation may produce on a guilty mind, reflecting on the crimes committed and the punishment that is to follow? Far from this, thrown into the midst of a horde of bandits, in whose eyes the least sign of repentance is cowardice,—or, rather, treason,—which they make him dearly expiate; for, in their savage obduracy, their senseless bravado, they consider every man as a spy on them, who, sad and disconsolate, regretting his fault, does not join in their audacious recklessness, and trembles at their contact. ”

“ A feeling that she had allowed herself, if even only for a moment, to be influenced against her better judgment, filled her with resentment against this man who had broken past her barriers again and again, and now offended not only the laws of society but the laws of decency by brutally pushing past her servants and holding her against her will a prisoner in her own apartments. ”

“ So far as such persons reflect at all and regulate their passions by the dictates of prudence, it seems plain that a fear of ghostly retribution, of the angry spirit of their victim, must act as a salutary restraint on their disorderly impulses; it must reinforce the dread of purely secular punishment and furnish the choleric and malicious with a fresh motive for pausing before they imbrue their hands in blood. ”

“ To speak plainly and without allegory or figure, it is not want of sense, but want of suspicion, by which innocence is often betrayed. Again, we often admire at the folly of the dupe, when we should transfer our whole surprize to the astonishing guilt of the betrayer. In a word, many an innocent person hath owed his ruin to this circumstance alone, that the degree of villany was such as must have exceeded the faith of every man who was not himself a villain. ”

“ He stole in there one night to perpetrate the crime. I was talking in my sleep. In my slumber I told the story of my secret marriage in such circumstantial detail that it impressed him as being true. Feeling that he could hold me with that, he spared my life, determined to wound me deeper than death if I struck at him.
"You see that he is a cowardly villain; but we sometimes have to use such.
"Now, my son, go forth; labor hard and climb high. Scale the high wall of prejudice. Make it possible, dear boy, for me to own you ere I pass out of life. ”

“ Of course, a reaction would follow the first red lust for denunciation and for revenge of the deep damnation of the taking off of the helpless victim. One would be continually paralyzed in the very act of [Pg 148] vengeance by the remembrance that one had no better authority than a dream for proof of crime in those one had always loved and trusted. ”

“ Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt, firmly sustained by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the vilest wretches ever placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity betrayed in every face that they noticed. ”

“ Can't you avoid them? Let their Vengeance light
On others' Heads, no matter whose, if you
Are but secure, and have the Cain in Hand:
For they're indiff'rent where they take Revenge,
Whether on him that cheated, or his Friend,
Or on a Stranger whom they never saw,
Perhaps an honest Peasant, who ne'er dreamt [Pg 122]
Of Fraud or Villainy in all his life;
Such let them murder, if they will a Score,
The Guilt is theirs, while we secure the Gain,
Nor shall we feel the bleeding Victims Pain. ”

“ Her first feeling was that of strong indignation against the man who could for one instant have believed her capable of crimes so heinous; but this first burst of displeasure soon gave place to a grateful sense of the generous forbearance which had so carefully concealed her supposed guilt from the world. A mind less noble and considerate would have blazoned forth those suspicions, to which a train of singular circumstances lent so apparent a reality. ”

“ If the melo-dramatic revenge of the stage is not practicable in real life, we know at least, my dear—for you see we have it from very high authority—that wicked deeds do not go unpunished. Far away at the remotest limits of the earth, this man, whom your puny efforts would be powerless to injure, may suffer for his crime. Try and think of this, Eleanor.”
“I cannot,” answered the girl. ”