share our common human nature. In proportion as we honour every man as a Master, a Person, a grown man, we tend to find in him a Christ or Son of God. If, however, Christ is the best word to fit the fact, it will not be proved so by any urgent insistence that all men must use it. It must be unbound from creedal limits, to win its own free way to common acceptance. It must take its chances with other words and phrases which equally express the same reality. Moreover, its new use, as distinguished from other uses of the past, must be honestly and distinctly proclaimed. One thing, finally, is certain. The faith, the religion, the life which goes with our thought of the divine humanity, that is, the God in man, or the ideal Christ, is altogether a grander thing than the Christianity of history, of the creeds and of the historic churches. This religion and the ordinary Christianity ought not to be confounded or even to bear the same name. The Christianity of the creeds and the churches has busied itself chiefly with methods of how to evade the Christianity of the ideal Christ. It has dealt mostly in names and symbols and not in realities. It has let men be content to worship Christ, who never had caught the idea of living the life of Christ. If we stand to-day for Christianity, it is a new Christianity, as different from the prevailing religions of Christendom, as Jesus' religion was different from the religion of the Scribes and Pharisees. We want a practical and spiritual religion, new to the world and yet as old as the prophets. The reality is dearer than all names, symbols, flags or sacraments. The ideal Christ before each of us is grander than the holiest man of the past. If any familiar names or words will help us to possess this Christlike type of life, let us lay hold boldly on such words and convert them to this highest use. If they do not help us, if they stand in our way, if they confuse and befog the minds of men, let us set them aside, as the ideal Christ surely commands. The name, Christ, is now on trial before the world. Can it be converted to the service of humanity? The Atonement A BY The Reverend Professor FRANKLIN JOHNSON, D.D., LL.D. T the close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth, the Christian world as a whole believes in a substitutionary atonement. This has been its belief ever since it began to think. The doctrine was stated by Athanasius as clearly and fully as by any later writer. All the great historic creeds which set forth the atonement at any length set forth a substitutionary atonement. All the great historic systems of theology enshrine it as the very ark of the covenant, the central object of the holy of holies. While the Christian world in general believes in a substitutionary atonement, it is less inclined than it once was to regard any existing theory of substitution as entirely adequate. It accepts the substitution of Christ as a fact, and it tends to esteem the theories concerning it only as glimpses of a truth larger than all of them. It observes that an early theory found the necessity of the atonement in the veracity of God, that a later one found it in the honour of God, and that a still later one found it in the government of God, and it deems all these speculations helpful, while it yearns for further light. If we should ask those who hold this doctrine on what grounds they believe that Christ is the substitute for sinners, there would be many answers, but perhaps in only two of them would all voices agree. The first of these grounds would be the repeated declarations of holy Scripture, which are so clear, so precise, so numerous, and so varied, that they leave no room to doubt their meaning. The other ground is the testimony of the human heart wherever it mourns its sin or rejoices in an accomplished deliverance. The declaration of the Scriptures that Christ bore our sins on the cross is necessary to satisfy the longings of the soul. The Christian world in general would say: "We believe in gravitation, in light, in electricity, in the all pervading ether, because we must, and not because we can explain them fully. So we believe that Christ died instead of the sinner because we must, and not because we know all the reasons which led God to appoint and to accept His sacrifice." While the Christian world as a whole believes in a substitutionary atonement, the doctrine is rejected by a minority of devout and able men, who present instead of it what has often been called "the moral influence theory." According to this, the sole mission of Christ was to reveal the love of God in a way so moving as to melt the heart and induce men to forsake sin. The theory is sometimes urged with so great eloquence and tenderness that one will fain find it sufficient as an interpretation at once of the Scriptures and of human want. Now no one calls in question the profound spiritual influence of Christ where He is preached as the propitiation of God, and those who believe the doctrine of a substitutionary atonement lift up the cross as the sole appointed means of reaching and saving the lost. They object only when "the moral influence theory" is presented as a sufficient account of the atonement, to the denial that the work of Christ has rendered God propitious towards man. One may appreciate the moon without wishing that it put out the sun and stars. The advocates of this theory, in order to make it an adequate explanation of the atonement, must clear the doctrine of substitution out of the way. They attempt to do this by advancing many arguments, only two of which need detain us here, since, these removed, the others, of lighter moment, will fall of themselves. First, it is said that the doctrine of substitution supposes that which is impossible. Guilt cannot be transferred from one person to another. Punishment and penalty cannot be transferred from a guilty person to an innocent one. An innocent person may be charged with sin, but if so he will be innocent still, and not guilty. An innocent person may suffer, but if so his suffering will |