prominent in the thought of the sacred writers. It is here that it is most closely interlinked with their teachings respecting sin, that inseparable correlate of redemption. If there is anything that distinguishes the Bible from all other books that were ever written, it is its doctrine of death in its relation to sin; and the point of most vital importance in the Scripture teachings respecting the atonement is the fact that the Son of God and Son of Man suffered death.

What is the Bible doctrine of death from Genesis to Revelation? It is that it is the divinely ordained consequence of human sin, the curse that has fallen upon the race and every individual of the race. How it came into the world as the punishment of Adam's sin, the opening chapters of the Old Testament tell us. The teaching of the Law and the Prophets is summed up in the solemn words, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." The New Testament reiterates the doctrine: "The wages of sin is death." "Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned." "In Adam all die." Death is the common curse, the universal consequence of human sin. It falls upon innocent and guilty alike, since all are alike bound together in that organic oneness of which we have already spoken. In so far as punishment is external suffering consequent upon sin, without reference to the question whether it be personal sin or another's sin, we may call death the common punishment of the race. There is even a sense in which we may say that the displeasure of God against a sinful race is objectivized in death, and falls upon all who suffer it, even in a sense upon the babe that has no knowledge of good and evil and has never sinned. And what is in this sense a common punishment becomes a personal punishment, involving the complete idea of punishment in the case of those who by sinful act have entered into the fellowship of human sin. To them it is the direct channel of the divine displeasure. To every unforgiven sinner death is in the deepest and most awful sense a punishment, and every disease and every pain, all the physical and mental sufferings which are the heralds of death, are in like manner the signs of the personal displeasure of God. While the pleasures of the world and life itself last, sin has not worked out its proper result. God maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and unjust. But in suffering, and most of all in death, God puts the sinner from him. The spiritual breach between the Creator and the sinful creature becomes a physical

breach. And so physical death looks back to spiritual death and forward to the second and eternal death, the former the state of the soul in sin as practically separated from God, the latter the awful final separation when the wrath of God abideth upon the rebellious sinner.

It was essential to the Mediator's atoning work that He should suffer death. Thus it behooved the Christ to suffer. That the divine Son should become the sinless Son of man, and as the vicar at once of God and man should endure the divinely ordained consequence of human sin, was necessary, in order that God might be just and the sinner's justifier. It was by passing through the awful event which is the standing witness and realization of God's displeasure with human sin, and by this only, that the true and complete atonement to God could be made in behalf of the human It is true that death was in a sense an incident in his career, that having become man he was subject to it like other men, that it lay in the path that led to his perfecting as the Saviour. But it was more than this. He became incarnate that He might might by so doing make atonement to God for the sin of men. He tasted death for every man.

race.

die, and He died that He

And it was significant that He died precisely the death He did. It was not a common death, but the cruel death of the cross. For God has given human sin the awful power to wrest as it were the sword out of the hands of the almighty Judge and use it in mockery of the divine justice. That the dreadfulness of human sin might be revealed, the Jewish rulers and the Roman governor were permitted to bring about the death of Christ. In the tragedy of redemption the God-man is caught in the sweep of human sin and suffers death at the hands of those He came to save. It was all needful, that the measure of sin might be filled full, that the sinner's Saviour might know the depth and fearfulness of human guilt. Yet the death inflicted upon Christ thus unjustly and before the time was nevertheless the death which God had made the common consequence of the sins of the race, and in a true sense in his sufferings it pleased the Father to bruise him.

We are pre

But did the Saviour bear our punishment? pared now to answer this question with due discrimination. The theory of substitution by punishment asserts that the very punishment which is due the sins of every sinner, or else its precise equivalent, was endured by Christ. His divine nature is made to intensify the sufferings of body and mind He endured, until an infinite penalty is paid for the sins of the countless millions of

mankind. It is easy to show the inconsistencies and ethical difficulties of this view. The old Socinian objections to it have never been answered, and its attempt to base itself upon the teachings of Scripture is a lamentable failure. And yet there is an element of truth in it which we are too ready, in our reaction from it, to throw away. The distinctions already made between the different factors in the conception of punishment enable us to discern a sense in which Christ did bear our punishment. Not in any quantitative way. Not in the sense of bearing the personal displeasure of God. Still less in the sense of tasting that eternal death which is reserved only for him who deliberately rejects God's offers of mercy. But in so far as suffering and death are the external punishment of sin, the curse resting upon a sinful race, Christ did enter into the fellowship of our punishment and bear it with us and for us. The cup which He was ready to drink and the baptism which He was ready to be baptized with were the doom which is the objectivization of God's wrath against mankind. The question whether or not we shall use the word " punishment" is an unimportant one, so long as we see in the death of Christ an enduring with and for men of that judgment which has fallen upon all men. Only thus could He make the atonement which was God's due. And in so doing I am ready even to believe that He came into contact with the divine displeasure in all its awful reality, not as a displeasure against himself, which would be absurd, but as a displeasure resting with fearful power on those with whom He had identified himself, and whom He had come to save. He felt it as the wife who shares the prison cell of a condemned husband feels the weight of his punishment and the just displeasure of society.

And let us bear in mind what has been affirmed at an earlier point in this paper, that the punishment which Christ bears-if we allow the term "punishment" in this sense is not a punishment from which He saves us. Atonement, as the New Testament teaches it, does not save the forgiven sinner from suffering and death. But in the deepest sense they are no longer punishment. For that which is the true essence of punishment, the divine displeasure, is gone. Death remains. Death remains. But death has lost its sting and its victory. Substitution by punishment aims at saving from future punishment. Substitution in atonement aims at transforming present punishment into the Father's loving discipline. Christ, by himself becoming subject to death, has delivered them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

VIII. There is still another point with regard to which clear and intelligent thought is of the greatest importance. We must face the question whether it is possible to penetrate further into the meaning of Christ's atoning death, or whether it must be left an impenetrable mystery. Why was the death of Christ atoning? What was there in the enduring of this penal consequence of sin that has secured forgiveness for believers? What did God see in this particular work of the well-beloved Son that made Him assume a new attitude towards mankind, an attitude of reconciliation? Why did the love of God, seeking the sinner's salvation, devise this method of the God-man's self-sacrifice upon the cross? These are deep questions. Who will say that we can answer them with any fullness? If anywhere the silence of faith is wise, it might seem to be here. And yet the atonement is not represented in the New Testament as a mystery in the heathen sense, that is, as a marvel that has no solution; but as a mystery in the apostolic sense of a long-hidden truth now once for all revealed. Is there no answer to our questions? Is there no simple principle of divine and human ethics which shall give us the key to this transcendent fact? Surely it is worth our while to see. Because theories have been advanced which are satisfying neither to our reason nor to our moral sense, theories wholly artificial and theories that fall far short of the requirements of the case, there is no reason why we should go to the opposite extreme of relinquishing our search after the true meaning of the atonement. Let us strive for all the light God has to give us.

We return to the conception of atonement. Between man and man the true atonement is a moral and personal proceeding. We have seen how different are atonement and punishment. And yet we have seen how close is the relation between atonement and punishment, how when the sufferings which follow in the track of wrong are borne with submission and acknowledgement of their desert, with sorrow for the wrong and desire for pardon and purpose of right living thereafter, this in itself may be the truest atonement and transform the suffering from punishment into a means of reconciliation. For there is no moral value in sufferings simply as sufferings. You can whip a dog till he feels as keen a physical pain as a man. We feel as deep mental anguish often over our mistakes that have hurt our pride as over our sins. It is the spirit in which suffering is endured that gives it its ethical significance. It is the humble and contrite heart that is the true sacrifice.

Christ is our substitute in atonement. He renders for man the atonement man cannot render for himself. That He might do this it was essential that He should die, for death is the common doom, the awful birthright of man the sinner. In all points He must be made like unto his brethren, and his likeness to them in death has the meaning of participation in the universal curse. But if this had been all, there would have been no atonement. Death is no more atoning than any other suffering. Otherwise pardon would come to all men without Christ, for all men die. Sufferings, in and of themselves, whether physical or mental, add no new element to the case. The divinely-human personality of the Saviour is no infinite multiplier to give his sufferings and death an infinite value. He might have suffered and died, if that were all, and still there would have been no atonement.

Christ was our vicar, our substitute. Why should the atonement the substitute renders for his race be different in kind from the atonement which the members of the race must render when they wrong each other, or which they ought to render to God himself, if it were only in their power? Why find a mystery, where the simple explanation seems to lie so near at hand? If in the common conception of atonement all turns upon the spirit in which the suffering of wrong-doing is borne, why shall we not find in the sufferings and death of Christ, vicariously endured for men, the same meaning? Of course we shall not expect an absolute identity in the two cases. Substitution, from its very nature, implies a difference. The substitute must be different from those for whom he acts, if he is to do what they cannot do. There must be a sense in which his act is not theirs, but only a substitute for theirs. The sinner dies deserving death; Christ dies undeservingly. The sinner is under the personal wrath of God; Christ was even in the agony of the cross the beloved Son in whom He was well pleased. The sinner must repent; Christ had no sin and could repent neither personally nor vicariously, for repentance does not fall into the category of vicarious actions. But, admitting all the elements in which the atonement of our vicar is different from the atonement which is due from us or, in other words, in which it is a substitute for our atonement, still no reason appears why it should be different in kind. The spirit and the purpose with which Christ bore that death which is the consequence of sin gave it its value as an atonement.

Here is our substitute upon the cross. God so loved the world

that He sent his Son to make the atonement. God is in Christ