of the human race were compounded for by the death upon Calvary. And it is because writers do not imitate, so far as is allowed them, the method of the Bible, that the doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ as expounded in books so often fails to move men, to draw them to Christ, as the Saviour Himself predicted that His death would have power to draw them. The Bible preaches the Atonement; we, too often, preach theories about the Atonement; and if the first method be that which was best adapted as a lever to move the world, it is quite evident that the second method must be less fitted for that purpose. I am sure that many of us here present to-day have often been pained and grieved (with a pain and grief such as we feel if our feelings towards those who are dearest to us are rudely jarred) by reading in pulpit discourses and tracts expositions of the most cherished faith and hope of our lives in illustrations borrowed from the insolvent debtors' court. Of course there is one reply to such a criticism as this which the authors of these discourses or tracts have ready upon their lips. They say, "Ah! it has always been so. The Atonement, in the beginning, was foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling-block to the Jew, and so will it

be to the end of time, so long as we are in their condition of spiritual darkness." In reply to which it may be submitted that there are many who find in the Bible, and in the formularies of our Church, only that which awes, and inspires, and fills them with humility and gratitude, but who yet turn with dissatisfaction and disgust from the subject when it is dissected and articulated by the theological demonstrator. It is the method which repels. There may be no conscious irreverence on the part of the expositor, but the fact that he approaches the subject from without, measuring and fathoming it as if it were measurable and fathomable by human instruments, this is the prime offence which they have to encounter who drew their first impressions of the mystery from the words of the Divine Sufferer, and who find in the fact of His life and death a comfort and inspiration which no commentaries can supply. Only while we look up to the Atonement, content to be abased beneath it, and to live and die through its warmth and light-content not to gauge it and to map it out-only so are we fitted to be drawn nearer and nearer to Him who was lifted up that we should no longer be servants to ourselves, but to Him.

Again, there is another reason why theories about the Atonement are unsatisfying and unstimulating. The Atonement is many-sided, and works by many influences. The commentator too often seizes upon one of these sides, and puts it forward as the only one. By thus presenting it to the exclusion of others, all proportion is lost. The truth he sees becomes a falsehood through exaggeration. The doctrine becomes unscriptural, not through being in itself unrepresented in Scripture, but because it leaves out of account other sides, and those as precious and as necessary in the work of persuading men to feel their relation to Christ.

Now, my brethren, after these words of preface, you will see how difficult it must be for me to speak to you on this subject without falling into some one of the errors of treatment which I have indicated, and without violating some of those canons of commentary which I have here suggested. But what I wish you to bear in mind is this, that my words of to-day do not profess to exhaust such a subject as the Atonement, or to take account of more than one or two of those aspects of the mystery which seem to be in danger of being neglected through the prominence more commonly given to some

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others. I do not think that on Trinity Sunday we shall be inappropriately using our time in seeking to make our thoughts more clear, and our belief more true, on this subject, the central point of our religion, through which indeed our perception of the Trinity is alone made available for our lives. On two Sundays past I have been seeking to clear the way for our study by inquiring into the meaning of sin, with relation to forgiveness and to punishment. Those who have followed me so far will remember that we ascertained that remission of sin was the constant language of the New Testament, when speaking of the effects of the incarnation and the death of Christ: and not remission of punishment. "He shall save His people from their sins," not from the punishment of their sins. "This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins," not for the abolition of punishment for sins. "Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins." Hence we learn that Christ came to remit sin —the debt incurred by man to his God.

Moreover, we spoke of punishment, as St. Paul spoke of it, not as an arbitrary penalty for sin, having no direct reference to the sin, but as flowing directly from the offence, even as a plant

from the seed that is sown.

"Whatsoever a

man soweth, that shall he also reap ;" and we reflected how every sin we have ever committed bears its fruit in our lives; if not in bodily suffering, or in impaired fortune or fame, still in impaired peace of mind and in deterioration of character and not only from our own sin, but from the sin of those who have preceded us, in accordance with the inexorable law that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Widely spread are the influences for evil, as for good, which are brought to bear upon our lives. For, as we derive our bodily constitution from our parents, so are we dependent on them for the training we receive. What is defective in that tells upon us, though the responsibility is not our own. Whatsoever has been sown that is evil, the harvest is evil also; we are creatures, for good or ill, of a million antecedents. We suffer for every sin of our own; for every sin of those whose influence has been directly or indirectly upon us. The punishment of sin is not remitted, nor can it be. Whatever was the purpose of the Atonement, it was not to restore that state of things which existed before sin entered the world. Those of us who have accepted and made their own the sacrifice of Christ, and are