Apostle does not simply affirm that in some undefined way the Lord Jesus Christ secures for us the Divine pardon: he expresses a definite conception of the way in which Christ secures it. We may refuse to analyse this conception; we may pronounce it impossible to determine whether a Propitiation was necessary before God could forgive us, or how, and in what sense, Christ was a Propitiation; but if we admit this conception of the work of Christ into our minds at all, we surrender ourselves to a theological theory. The results of refusing to make the theory a definite object of reflection may be most mischievous. We may come almost unconsciously to ascribe to God those blind movements of passion which, among ourselves, are sometimes exhausted by the infliction of cruel suffering, and sometimes placated by ignominious submission or by still more ignominious intercession: our idea of God may be corrupted, and we may involve the Sacrifice of Christ in the deepest dishonour. To speculate is perilous; not to speculate may be more perilous still.

It is very possible for our theory of the Atonement to be crude and incoherent, but it is hardly possible to have no theory at all. Some conception, however vague, of the relations between human sin and the Death of Christ, and between the Death of Christ and the Divine forgiveness, will take form and substance in the mind of every man who is in the habit of reading the New Testament, and who believes that the teaching of Christ and of His Apostles reveals the thought of God.

Further, to insist that a due reverence for the awful greatness of God requires us to accept the fact that we are forgiven for Christ's sake, but to make no attempt to discover the principles of the Divine government or the perfections of the Divine nature which the fact illustrates, appears to be inconsistent with the characteristic spirit of the Christian revelation and a renunciation of the prerogatives which belong to the sons of God. "The entrance of Thy words giveth light" this is the testimony of one who lived in those early times when God dwelt apart, when "clouds and darkness" were round about Him, and the hearts of saints were longing for that clearer vision of His glory which was to be the joy and wonder of later and happier generations. Even then the Divine Word was something more than a dark formula in an unknown. tongue. It was not an incantation or a spell. When it came to men even as a definite law the underlying principle shone through.

It was necessary, no doubt, in the earlier stages of the history of our race that the Will should be chastened and disciplined by authoritative commandments; for men must be formed to the practice of the elementary virtues before it is possible for them to recognise the beauty and nobleness and eternal obligation of Righteousness. But commandments which at first seemed arbitrary were so transfigured that to devout souls the Divine "statutes" became "songs" which filled with music the house of their pilgrimage. When the heir differed nothing from a servant, though he was

lord of all, God relaxed the bonds of mere external authority for those who had the spirit of children, and treated them not as slaves, but as sons. Now that "the fulness of time has come" it is at once our duty and our blessedness to accept complete emancipation, and to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free."

This liberty is something more than exemption from the mere inconveniences imposed by the irksome restraints of the ancient law. It is one of the noblest prerogatives of that higher and more intimate relationship to the Father into which we have entered through our union with Christ. It determines the spirit and form of the whole revelation of God's character and will, and it should determine our own attitude in the presence of that revelation.

The precepts of the Lord Jesus Christ are all of a kind to enlighten the conscience, and not merely to control the will. They are useless so long as the principles of which they are the expression do not shine in their own light. They are positively mischievous to those who try to obey them as rules instead of using them freely as aids to the apprehension of great ethical and spiritual laws. "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away; ""Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on;" "Judge not, that ye be not judged;"—these commandments and many others are unavailable as mere rules of conduct. They fulfil

a higher purpose, and are intended so to exalt and purify our ideal of perfection that every Christian man may become a law to himself.

The revelation of Truth in the New Testament conforms to the same method. It comes to us not as dogma, but as doctrine. We are "taught of God," and are not merely required to profess our faith in the articles of a creed. There are, no doubt, positive declarations that the Lord Jesus Christ was God. manifest in the flesh,-declarations which have been built up by theologians into massive arguments for the defence of the great truth of our Lord's divinity. But the reverence and worship with which we bow down before Him who is seated at God's right hand, "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come," the loyal homage that we offer to "the King of kings and Lord of lords" are not the answer of a blind submission to the "proof-texts" of dogmatic theology. We, too, have seen "His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father," "we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."

"He that followeth Me"-this was His own promise "shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." He has declared that if we "continue" in His " Word," we "shall know the Truth." What we receive at first on His bare authority, we shall come to know for ourselves-as He knew it ; not, indeed, with

the same fulness and completeness of knowledge, but with the same directness of intuition.

If it should be said that this immediate knowledge of spiritual truth is transcendental, and that even those to whom it comes in largest measure may be unable to translate it into the forms of the logical understanding; that the vision of God which is promised to "the pure in heart" is one thing, and the theory of God which is attempted by the theological or philosophical intellect a different thing altogether, I admit it. This admission, however, can be of little service to those who contend that the Death of Christ as the Propitiation for the sins of the world is a mystery of which we can know nothing, and which we cannot attempt to penetrate without presumption. All theological theories, which are anything more than empirical classifications of Scripture texts, are imperfect attempts to express in the language of the intellect what has been immediately revealed to the spirit; as all scientific theories are attempts to express in the language of the intellect what has been immediately revealed to the senses. We are related to two worlds—the world of physical phenomena and the world of spiritual facts and persons. Of both we have an immediate and direct, though limited, knowledge. The function discharged by science for the knowledge which comes to us, we know not how, of the boundless and incessant flux of colour, and sound, and form in the material universe, is discharged by theology for the knowledge which comes to us, we know not how, of the universe of spiritual life and