I therefore saw that the doctrine of "vicarious agonies" was fundamentally unscriptural.
This being fully discerned, I at last became bold to criticize the popular tenet.

What should we think of a judge, who, when a boy had deserved a stripe which would to him have been a sharp punishment, laid the very same blow on a strong man, to whom it was a slight infliction?
Clearly this would evade, not satisfy justice.

To carry out the principle, the blow might be laid as well on a giant, an elephant, or on an inanimate thing.

So, to lay our punishment on the infinite strength of Christ, who (they say) bore in six hours what it would have taken thousands of millions of men all eternity to bear, would be a similar evasion .-- I farther asked, if we were to fall in with Pagans, who tortured their victims to death as an atonement, what idea of God should we think them to form?
and what should we reply, if they said, it gave them a wholesome view of his hatred of sin?
A second time I shuddered at the notions which I had once imbibed as a part of religion, and then got comfort from the inference, how much better men of this century are than their creed.

Their creed was the product of ages of cruelty and credulity; and it sufficiently bears that stamp.
Thus I rested in the Scriptural doctrine, that the _death_ of Christ is our atonement.