PREFACE. HESE Lectures were prepared at the request THE of the Committee of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, and were delivered in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, during the months of February, March, and April in the present year. Concerning the method which I have followed, there is little to be added to the explanations contained in the Lectures themselves. It may, however, be well to state that in illustrating the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Apostles to the Fact of the Atonement, my intention is simply to show that the Death of Christ is conceived and described as being the objective ground on which we receive the Remission of sins. The premature attempt to construct a Theory of the Atonement on the basis of those descriptions of the Death of Christ which represent it as a Ransom for us, or as a Propitiation for the sins of the world, or on phrases in which Christ is described as dying for us, or dying for our sins, has been the mischievous cause of most of the erroneous Theories by which the glory of the FACT has been obscured. Until we have considered the actual relations of the Lord Jesus Christ, both to the eternal Law of Righteousness which the sins of men have violated, and to the human race, and until we have discovered what light these relations throw upon the Fact that His Death is the ground on which sin is forgiven, it appears to me that we are in no position to determine with any confidence to what extent the Death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is described as a "Ransom," is analogous to other ransoms, or to what extent the Death of Christ, which is described as a "Propitiation," is analogous to the propitiatory acts by which men are accustomed to allay the anger of those whom they may have offended, or to the propitiatory sacrifices by which the heathen have attempted to avert the displeasure of angry gods. These descriptions cannot be made the foundation of a theory of the Atonement, but they are sure tests by which we may ascertain the accuracy of a theory. Unless our conception of the Death of Christ gives a natural explanation of all the forms in which it is represented by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the writers of the New Testament, our conception is either false or incomplete. The series of Lectures of which this is the third, may be regarded as taking the place of another series, known as the CONGREGATIONAL LECTURE, which commenced in the year 1833, and which was suspended about 1860. The third Lecture in the earlier series was also on the Atonement. It was delivered in the Congregational Library, exactly forty years ago, by the late Rev. Joseph Gilbert, of Nottingham, who was one of the most learned and thoughtful theologians among the Congregational ministers of his time. I read and re-read Mr. Gilbert's Lectures at a time when my own theological convictions were unformed. How much I am indebted to them it would be difficult to say. They always seemed to me singularly judicious and able. To my friends the Rev. Dr. Henry Allon, the Rev. J. G. Rogers, the Rev. Professor Simon, and Professor Massie, I am under obligations of various kinds. That Dr. Allon and Mr. Rogers, notwithstanding their own heavy engagements, should have been good enough to assist me in the irksome task of revising the proofs of this volume, calls for my most grateful acknowledgments. Three or four paragraphs which appeared in two articles on the Atonement, published in the British |