The Christian idea of atonement; lectures delivered at Regents Park College, London, in 1903.

Front matter

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA

OF ATONEMENT

LECTURES DELIVERED AT REGENT'S PARK COLLEGE, LONDON, IN 1903

Preface

The present volume contains the substance of eight Lectures which were delivered in May, 1903, but, as previously arranged with the Angus Trustees, it includes much additional matter. The closing Lecture on Justification was not delivered, the seventh, on The Significance of Christ’s Death, was divided into two parts, and other Lectures were given in an abbreviated form.

I have not founded my discussion of the Atonement on the Fatherhood of God, although to my mind this expresses the most fundamental as well as the loveliest conception of God’s relationship to us, and nothing at variance with it can be predicated of Him. But our Father in Heaven is also the blessed and only Potentate, the Lawgiver, Judge, and King of all the earth. Each of these analogical titles represents an aspect of the Deity which should never be ignored, and each is associated with a set of correlative terms which cannot be disused without loss, and become incongruous if intermixed. Hence it

PREFACE appears preferable to found our discussions on a definition of the Divine Nature rather than upon any relative term, however beautiful. God must always be the same in all His relations, and under all the analogical forms in which these can be partially expressed. Therefore, when we start with a definition of His nature, we have a clue to the harmonious interpretation of all the names and titles which have been multiplied, to give breadth and fulness to our faith.

My sincere thanks are due to the Rev. Archibald Bisset, of Ratho Manse, Midlothian, and to my esteemed colleagues, the Rev, Professor Glass, M.A., and the Rev. Professor Medley, M.A., who have rendered valuable assistance in the preparation of these Lectures for the Press.

T. V. T.

Rawdon College,

Introduction

Reasons for offering a new discussion of the Atonement.

LECTURE I.

Review of Theories.

Method of study. The dangers of conciliation. The duty of criticism. Types of Theory defined. Reasons for at once testing the basal prindjgle^of all Penal Theories, viz., that the Divine Nature demands for its satisfaction the punishment of all sin. A denial of this principle is not a denial that sin deserves punishment. This principle unknown to the early Church. Patristic theories of satisfaction. Marcion, the earliest and truest precursor of Anselm. Views of Irenmus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine. Mediaeval developments of Penance and Satisfactions. Gregory the Great. Anselm’s Theory reviewed. Modified and Supplementary doctrine of the Reformers. Inferences from this review

LECTURE II.

First Principles.

Definitions of the word Punishment. Reasons for rejecting the Penal Theory: — (i) Its basal principle is not affirmed in Scripture. Fundamental passage, Gen. ii. 1 7, does not preclude forgiveness. Same words linked with offer of pardon, Ezek. xviii. 20, 21. Echoed in

Rom. v. 12, vi. 28; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22; Jas. i. 18. Irrelevant texts. Christ’s sufferings for us not said to be penal : texts examined. (2) It is a contradiction of explicit declarations in the Old Testament. Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7 ; Ezek. xviii., xxxii., etc. God’s Name, or revealed Nature, the hope of sinful men. (3) It is incompatible with the teachings and actions of Christ.

The command to forgive imperative, a refusal unpardonable. God’s actions must accord with His commands. Anselm’s evasive reply. Human forgiveness confirmed in heaven, Matt, xviii. 18, 20 ; John xx. 23. Christ’s attitude towards sinners a revelation of God’s. (4) It fails to do justice to God’s inexorable hatred of sin. Extermination stronger term than punishment. Extermination of sin implies either the extinction of sinners, or their salvation from sin. Universalism and annihilation neither axiomatic nor demonstrable. Conclusion reached. God’s nature demands for its satisfaction the use of all possible measures to secure (a) the extermination of sin, (6) the salvation of sinners. These objects complementary. This principle the basis of any true theory of Atonement 39

LECTURE III.

The Factors of the Problem of Atonement.

God’s measures for His own satisfaction determined (1) Primarily by His own Nature. He cannot deny Himself. “God is Love.” Unworthy ideas of love: confounded with lust, with mere liking. Love may intensify anger, must be inexorable — more than an attribute. Its nature an integral part of Revelation. The cross God’s definition of Himself. (2) The Nature of Man. (3) The Nature of Sin. The discussion of these unified. “Sin is Lawlessness,” 1 John iii. 4, ifiaprin not an innocent failure. John’s definition extended. Transgression may include moral states. Responsibility delimited. Heredity. Environment. Culpability to be included in the term Sin in this discussion. Reasons assigned. Definition may include some unconscious transgressions, but not all. Infants not moral agents, except potentially. Paul ; Calvin ; Dr. Cave. Divine law not an arbitrary decree.

.S VILA BUS

Ethical duties implied in personal relations. Law eternal, legal codes temporal. Man’s duties to God determined by his character. Objective conformity to law may be sinful, and vice versa. What is not of faith is sin. God will distinguish between error and sin, between injury suffered and wrong done. Reluctance of Theologians to maintain this distinction well meant, but disastrous. (4) The consequences of Sin. Physical, Intellectual, Moral, Circumstantial. Classification arbitrary, but convenient. Evil of exaggerating or underestimating any single class. For some of these consequences man not responsible, for others wholly, or in part. God alone can discriminate. The Pelagian Controversy 84

LECTURE IV.

Remedial Measures.

Separate remedies for evil and sin not requisite. God can tolerate neither. Error needs light, but may thereby be developed into sin. The supreme problem is the remedy of sin. Some non-remedial expedients. Annihilation, Eternal conscious punishment, Coercive repression. The only remedy is that which cleanses the springs of conduct. God can be satisfied only by voluntary obedience. This cannot be enforced by omnipotence. Hence remedial action may be indefinitely prolonged. How can voluntary obedience be secured ? God’s will summed up in the words “ Thou shalt love.” Love is the fulfilling of the law. Hence to exterminate sin and save sinners God must beget love in man. God’s love eternal and spontaneous ; man’s love derivative. God can beget love only by first loving us. Conclusion : — That for the satisfaction of His own nature and the fulfilment of His purposes, God will commend and impart His love to men at any cost to Himself. Sundry objections. That God cannot love sinners. Augustine, Calvin, Hodge. That the revelation of love is not a primary object of Christ’s Life and Death. Dale. These objections all based on similar idea of Propitiation. This idea repudiated. The appeal to Scripture. Damaging concessions by Dr. Fairbairn and Bushnell 155 xii

LECTURE V.

Biblical Ideas of Propitiation.

Atonement in the Old Testament : usual etymology of kipper accepted. The idea of covering sin lost in religious usage or expressed by different word. Man’s attempts to cover sin before God denounced by the prophets and never sanctioned by any ritual code. Sin-offerings always confessional. The idea of placating God excluded by the idiom. God never named as the object of the verb kipper. Pagan usage illustrated in Gen. xxxii. 20 ; Prov. xvi. 14. God’s readiness to forgive presupposed by the law of sacrifice. The idea that sacrifice could take away sin scrupulously shut out. Heb. ix. 22 relates historically to the Hebrew law. No atonement allowed for wilful sins. Four exceptions which magnify the principle. Dilemma : either no serious sins were remitted while the law reigned, or they were remitted without blood-shedding. The ritual law in strict harmony with the prophets and with Psalm li. Moral basis of sacrificial legislation. God’s Name, or revealed Nature, the ground of hope in His mercy. Ancient Semitic religion and Hebrew ritual. The law of sacrifice corrective of false ideas of propitiation. The Septuagint. The perplexity of translators. Etymological equivalents of kipper refused. Greek sacrificial terms adopted ; this fact misinterpreted by J. Morison. Meaning transformed by Hebrew idioms. Startling effect on Greek readers. Hebrew sacrifices shown to be unique. The New Testament writers followed LXX. Hilasmos in I. John ii. 2, iv. 10, excludes the idea of placating God. Rom. iii. 26. Morison. Sanday. Hilasterion, how used. God the author, not the object, of propitiation. Christ demonstrates the righteousness of remission. The fact must precede the demonstration. Conclusions confirmed by use of other terms, specially Reconciliation. Redemption involves the same principle as atonement. The law of God. The duties of kinsman often costly. The idea transferred to God. Israel redeemed out of Egypt, but no price paid. The death of Christ a “ ransom.” Men redeemed from “bondage,” “destruction,” “iniquity,” “ death,” “ vain manner of life,” but no vendor conceivable. Redeemed xiii

I'AGE

unto God, not from Him. Christ God’s agent in redemption as in creation. Propitiation and redemption the costly activities, not the price, of God’s love . . .191

LECTURE VI.

Salvation by Love Through Faith.

The question resumed — How could God reproduce His own love in man ? The answer of Scripture clear — John iii. 16, xvii. 3; Romans v. 8. Slowness of the Church to appreciate this answer. Doubts suggested. Is the doctrine true, or has God failed ? Why Christ so late in coming ? If love can cure, why not prevent sin ?

The difficulty of revealing love. The holier it is, the more inexplicable its ways. Giving restricted by receptiveness. Love has no regenerative power until recognised and believed. Hence the problem arises. How can God awaken faith ? Man died to God through doubt, and can only be begotten again through the truth. Faith cannot be given as a substantive, yet the gift of God. Human analogies. The initial difficulty antecedent to sin and its consequences. Distinction between faith and the absence of doubt. Faith is the conquest of doubt. In an ideal paradise the highest love unknowable. The cross a meaningless horror. Some trial involving possibility of doubt a prerequisite of faith. Increase of faith involves progressive difficulty. Triumphant faith implies the maximum of trial. Hence things against us are for us. Man’s extremity God’s opportunity of self-revelation. No delay in Christ’s advent. The cross not a rectification of mistake or delay, but the crown of God’s work of love 251

LECTURE VII.

The Significance of Christ’s Death.

The work of Christ the culmination of remedial activities. His Death the central interest of the Gospels. But inseparable from the life before and after. Social contact the condition of personal revelation. Ends served by His chosen course of life. The cross the goal, and not

XIV a mere incident, of His career. Why made a public spectacle ? Death, terrible in proportion to the fulness of life. What was death to the Son of God ? Dread strangely blended with resolve. Physical pain lost in mental anguish. The martyr’s exultation absent. The great cry, a sermon to the world, not an utterance of weakness. The rending of personality the last trial of faith. No severance of heart or will. A mutual sacrifice for man’s reunion with God. Specific reasons why Christ’s death was necessary for man’s redemption, (i) Had Christ not died He would have escaped that which men most dread, thus limiting His range of manifested sympathy. (2) He would have escaped the extreme force of temptation, and so failed to inspire faithfulness even unto death. (3) He would have been unable to give His disciples an assurance of fellowship with Himself beyond the grave. (4) He would have evaded the last injury which human hatred could inflict, thus lessening His powerto convince of sin. (5) He would have given no adequate demonstration of God’s power to forgive.

(6) He would have imperfectly revealed the impotence of sin against God. (7) He would have failed to reveal the truth that God is grieved by sin. Reluctance of the Church to admit that God can suffer, yet the Man of Sorrows is the manifestation of God. Some elements of the sorrow thus made known ; ( a ) Because of the havoc wrought by sin in human nature ; (1 b ) On account of the anguish God beholds in man ; ( c ) Because of the limitation imposed by unbelief upon the benignant use of Omnipotence. This kind of sorrow commonly affirmed in Scripture. It meets the dilemma that God is either not good or not omnipotent. Comparison with J. S. Mill’s solution. The weakness of Christ mightier than omnipotence. Illustrated by the Golden Parable. (8) Without dying Christ would not have given the strongest possible demonstration of God’s antagonism to sin. (9)

He would have failed to reveal the unspeakable difficulty and costliness of mercy. All these aspects of the cross essential to its power to shine into our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God ; and without this there could be no redemption 276 xv

LECTURE VIII.

Justification by Faith.

Is the preceding view of Faith complete? Is Justification the rectification of life only, or is it a Judicial Act ? The question demands a review of the Epistle to the Romans. Not a systematic treatise. Its theme, the Righteousness of God. Its aim to commend the righteousness of mercy. Its peculiarities of style due to missionary fervour. Its structure logical. To establish God’s righteousness Paul needed (i) To convict all men of sin. Method of proof personal, not abstract. (2) To show that his gospel included an assurance of Universal Judgment by one Judge, and in flawless equity. (3) To demonstrate the righteousness of God in justifying believers in Christ. This argument evasive unless c iikaiod , a forensic term. Why this significance of the word has been repudiated. Thomas Erskine’s aim excellent, but his method fallacious. Justification is equivalent to God’s reckoning of Faith for righteousness. Why Abraham was introduced. Logizomai always denotes a real judgment. Traditional dogma of imputed righteousness an unscriptural invention. The views of Wicliffe and Luther Pauline. Why Paul despised “ the righteousness which is of the law.” ( a ) Because necessarily imperfect ; (/>) Because even if perfect it would lack the finest ethical qualities. Herbert Spencer’s ethical ideal similar to Paul’s, but his scientific theory sterile. Paul’s idea of the righteousness of Faith derived from Christ. Illustrated by Christ’s own perfection as a Son ; by His parables of the Publican, the Prodigal Son, and the Great Feast. How harmonise a judicial act with God’s Fatherhood ? No incongruity between Kingship and Paternity. The King is our Father in Heaven. His kingdom is also a Royal Family. God’s principles of government the same through all dispensations. Paul’s illustration : the son while under legal subjection is none theless a son. At maturity he is legally released from legal obligation. So a forensic act may deliver from bond service into the freedom of filial life. Sonship is God’s satisfaction. He sees this in the repentant Prodigal, but not in the punctiliousness of the elder brother. Justification apart

XVI from the works of the law seen in the Prodigal’s unconditional restoration to the privileges of home. Faith in Christ as the Saviour means participation in His hatred of sin, and His devotion to the Father’s will. Vital union issues in likeness of spirit and character. For equitable reasons there is no condemnation to those “ in Christ.” The development of Christian life is the outgrowth of Faith, and demonstrates its ethical value.

The righteous mercy of God in Christ is the basis of Christian ethics. Romans xii. enjoins a righteousness which exceeds the highest thoughts of Jewish Pharisees and Gentile stoics. Paul’s conception of religion sublimely simple. Christianity is patriarchal Theism enriched by ages of Divine tuition, and with all the wealth of spiritual power supplied by Christ. Atonement an all inclusive word to describe God’s part in overcoming evil with good 341

Atonetnenl and Law.

F'aith in the reign of law essential to the idea of a Cosmos, and therefore to the idea of God. The strength of Anselmic theology lies in its supposed maintenance of this principle. Its satisfaction of law unreal. The Author of Nature cannot violate His own order. Nature no respecter of persons or of moral qualities. Forgiveness does not imply an arbitrary arrest of consequence.

The order of nature includes the operation of causes which modify and arrest trains of sequence. Remedial action familiar in physics and morals. Moral remedies include forgiveness. Pardon under right conditions promotes reform, and works downwards to remove the causes of disease. Physical and moral remedies work conjointly to counteract the destructive tendencies of sin. Death God’s physical remedy for the physical consequences of transgression. Science can frame no objection to the atonement considered as a remedial spiritual force. The effects of this force can be scientifically observed. Faith in the Gospel as the power of God is their only rational explanation. The forecast of Science is racial Death. The cross is a pledge of victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ 419

THE

CHRISTIAN

IDEA OF

ATONEMENT

Eight hundred years ago Anselm was reluctantly persuaded to supply an answer to the question, Cur Deus Homo ? For several centuries thought upon this deep mystery of the Gospel had been almost stagnant. A debased theology diverted attention from the significance of Christ’s work for men, to those sacrificial masses which were offered by priests, and those laborious prayers and works which were imposed on penitents as the conditions of pardon by the Church. But late in the eleventh century there was a new stirring of religious thought. Small communities were gathered outside the ecclesiastical fold, and were persecuted for heresy ; while many who remained inside began to ask questions to which the dominant Church had no replies. Most notably they inquired : Why did

Christ come into the world ? How could His death avail for man’s salvation ?

The two facts that Anselm was plied with these questions, and that he made a most memorable attempt to answer them, mark an epoch in the history of Christian thought. The Reformation was still far distant, but this turning of men’s hearts towards Christ was a sign that the dark age was ready to pass away, and the dawn of a new day at hand.

Since then men have never ceased to ask the same solemn questions, and many have aspired to give a satisfactory reply, yet, strange to say, no answer has sufficed to stop this questioning. To-day more people are asking, and more are answering than ever, but no one dares to think that his reply is final and complete. Few seekers after truth are thoroughly content with any answer they have heard, and many capable thinkers declare that no answer has been or ever will be found, and that the darkness which surrounds the Cross is a Divine obscurity into which it is useless and dangerous for the human intellect to intrude. Let us be satisfied, they plead, to hear the voice of mercy which speaks to our hearts from Calvary, and desist from all attempts to frame an intellectual theory of Atonement. It is enough to believe that Christ suffered on our behalf, and that in His name repentance is granted, and remission of sins proclaimed to every creature.

There is a large element of truth in this plea.

The history of Christianity demonstrates that Christ crucified, and not any theory of Atonement, is the power of God unto salvation. The fervent heat of sacrificial love has passed into human hearts through teachings which have sadly failed to transmit the rays of intellectual light. Thus spiritual life has survived, and borne rich fruit in at least a few rare saints, even in the darkest ages of the Church. But while these facts are indisputable, and in their way consolatory, they afford no adequate support to the plea so often based upon them.

Those who deprecate attempts to elucidate the principle of Atonement appear to overlook a most vital distinction between the conditions of individual salvation and the conditions of victorious Christian work. It would be unworthy of a great God to base the forgiveness of sin upon an intellectual grasp of the mysteries of His kingdom, for in this case only theologians could be saved. A message sent from Heaven to a world like this could not be a gospel unless its essential meaning were simple enough to be appreciated, and taken down into the heart by feeble and uncultured people. We may well thank God that His good tidings can be revealed to “ babes and sucklings,” and are hidden from the “ wise and prudent ” until humbled to become as little children. But Christianity makes provision for something more than bare salvation. Its most characteristic note is discipleship, and the Master’s method is to treat His followers as friends to whom all His thoughts and

B 2 plans may be confided, thus fitting them to become fellow-workers with the Truth in the recovery and enlightenment of the world. We are well assured that none will perish because of crude thinking, but the power of the Church to propagate her faith is largely dependent on her power to commend the great truths of the Gospel to the understanding as well as to the hearts of men.

This principle is written large in the history of the Reformation. The great power of the Reformers lay in the fact that they cleared away a mass of traditional teaching, which tended to obstruct personal relations between individual souls and Christ. They did not clear away all the semi-pagan rubbish which had gathered round the Cross, but they removed much, and with no faltering voice they directed men to look to Christ for wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Their statements of doctrine were not made in unison. The chief leaders were strongly opposed to each other’s teachings on important subjects, and none of them was perfectly consistent in the development of his own doctrinal system ; but they were all of one accord in setting forth Christ and Him crucified as the sole and all-sufficient object of faith. The great outstanding fact of the epoch is that Christ was preached, and that multitudes were taught to say :

“ Thou O Christ art all I want More than all in Thee I find.”

But as time passed men became more painfully aware of their differences and less conscious of their agreement. Hence controversies arose ; criticism became keener, more general, and, worst of all, more acrimonious. Sects multiplied. Official creeds stereotyped expressions of opinion which became tests of fellowship and divisional banners. To-day there is a strong yearning to reverse this deplorable process ; to abandon strife, to make less of differences, and to unite more widely for fraternal intercourse and common service on the ground of a common loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord of all.

But while rejoicing in this healthful movement of the Christian spirit, we cannot disguise the fact that the reuniting hosts are not exerting such a commanding power as might have been expected. Churches are not conscious of augmenting influence. On all sides men are asking why such vast numbers absent themselves from public worship. Cries of weakness are heard from trusted leaders, and thousands are depressed as when standard-bearers faint upon the field.

The causes assigned for these discouraging facts are manifold, and most of them are, I believe, really operative, so that no short and simple explanation can be given of what is obviously a most complex problem. It is not my intention to discuss this grave question, but no one will controvert the statement that one of the most potent causes of the evil is a widespread enfeeblement of confidence in the Bible as a treasury of Divine Revelation.

But here, again, we have to recognise complexity, for this diminished confidence in the Bible is not traceable to any single cause. By many it is set down to the unsettling effects of the Higher Criticism ; but others retort by throwing the blame on those who entrench themselves behind a theory of Scripture, which not only critics but thousands of illiterate people have rejected as incredible. The uncertainty of mind produced by this controversy is widespread, and for the time being its effects are calamitous. But if this were all, we might hope for an early recovery of confidence. Nothing can permanently weaken the real authority of the Bible, which is compatible with reverence for its religious teachings. Martin Luther anticipated some of the supposed results of recent criticism respecting the authorship, dates, and composite character of several books. Yet his faith flourished and was potent in its works. The members of the Society of Friends are less unanimous than formerly in accepting Robert Barclay’s doctrine of Scripture, but it still represents the views of a large majority, and it keeps them in characteristic peace as calm spectators of the present strife.

These facts encourage a belief that the evangelical churches would not find their position weakened if they were to put themselves more in accord with Martin Luther, and in some respects with the Society of Friends.

But a deeper and more formidable cause of mistrust, which the Higher Criticism did not originate, is at work, and would remain, and be equally operative if the Higher Criticism were silenced : viz., the intense repugnance which is felt- by an ever-growing number of people to certain doctrines which the Bible is supposed to teach ; and of these the most vital are those which relate to the redemptive value and significance of the Death of Christ.

The state of opinion on this subject is not easily definable, because modes of expression are marvellously varied, but the main question at issue can be given without prejudice to particular differences. The theory of Atonement, which for several centuries has been widely upheld as the true doctrine of Scripture, is one which identifies vicarious suffering with vicarious punishment. Careful defenders of this view refrain from saying that Christ was punished, but they draw a distinction, which simple minds have some difficulty in appreciating, by saying that although Christ was not punished He bore the punishment of man’s sin ; and that He bore this for our salvation, because if God were to forego the execution of the death penalty, He would thereby violate His own immutable justice and falsify His threatenings. Teachers of this school differ much in their account of the effect produced on God’s mind by the sacrifice of Christ, the persons for whom it was offered, and the manner in which its benefits are distributed ; but they are of one accord in declaring that God can righteously forgive sin, only because the extreme sentence of the law has been inflicted upon a sinless substitute.

We are sometimes told by sanguine Christian thinkers of another school that this theory of Atonement is obsolete and therefore negligible; but this is preposterously untrue to the facts. This theory remains in the standards of numerous Denominations, and in the trust deeds of many churches and colleges. Its fundamental principle is taught explicitly in some of the most widely used text-books of theology, and implicitly by many writers and preachers who perhaps too carefully soften its terminology. True or false, fashionable or unfashionable, it represents the convictions of a countless host of Christians, and outside the churches there is a widespread impression that it is the actual doctrine of Scripture, and that those who repudiate it on ethical grounds do thereby, consciously or unconsciously, pronounce an adverse judgment on the religious value of the Bible.

Those who take this view are in my judgment totally mistaken, but they are confirmed in it by the language and attitude of many influential leaders of Christian thought. Horace Bushnell, for example, to whom I shall have to refer more fully hereafter, plainly declared that the language of Scripture accords with the pagan idea of propitiating God by sacrifice, yet he denounced this idea on ethical grounds, and sought to escape the dilemma thus created, by asserting that the New Testament writers did not really mean what their words mean ! Without going so far as this many theologians and practically all the Higher critics profess to find this idea of propitiation in the Old Testament ritual codes, and contrast it with the teaching of the prophets. Almost all who reject the Penal Theory of Atonement do so on ethical grounds, and few attempt to interpret such terms as Propitiation, Atonement, and Redemption, in harmony with their own conception of God’s character, or make any serious effort to explain the prominent way in which the blood of Christ is connected in the New Testament with the remission of sins. Many preachers are silent on these subjects, and betray a dislike of theology, and a marked preference for semi-political, social, literary, or at best ethical themes for pulpit discourse. Others affirm that the Scriptures certainly declare that Christ propitiated God, but manifest some aversion to the pagan sense of this expression, and say that only God Himself can know what this word means in relation to Himself.

It is not strange that in view of these rather sinister facts, vast numbers of people conclude that the Scriptures really do teach the doctrine which so many Christian teachers disavow or silently avoid, and so many more express in euphemistic terms ; nor is it strange that a suspicion should be abroad that many who detest it most are nevertheless aware that it is scriptural.

In my judgment the gravest peril to Christian faith in the coming generation proceeds from this impression that Biblical authority and enlightened morality are in opposition. If I perceived any real antagonism between these two forces, I should have

IO no hesitation in predicting how the strife would end, or in choosing my own side in the conflict. No external authority can justify a refusal to obey that Divine faculty within us which is our chief protection against temptation and delusion. By this faculty we discern the difference between good and evil, between Christ and ojher masters of the soul. By our fidelity to the mandates of this kingly power we shall eternally judge ourselves, and thereby we shall be judged with infallible rectitude by God. By this faculty we ask Mohammedans, Hindus, and others to judge their sacred books and the religions under which they have grown up. By this we ask them to approve the majesty and glory of the God and Father whom we worship, and to recognise the Divine beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the long run all religious systems and all thoughts and customs which this faculty condemns will be consumed out of the earth ; and unless the doctrine of Atonement, actually taught in the Bible, can abide the fire already kindled, it will be among the things that perish.