as plain matter of
history, to "take away the sin of the world," we surely have
something to go upon in our attempt to determine who he is. The
question will rise, Have Christians overstated their experience, or
even misunderstood it? Has forgiveness been, in fact, achieved--or
salvation from sin? Can sin be put away at all? What will the
evidence for this be? I do not know what the evidence could be,
except the new life of peace with God, and all the sunshine and
blessing that go with it. This new life is at all events all the
evidence available; and how much it means is very difficult to
estimate without some personal experience.

Here again the great theories of Redemption will help us to recover
the experience they are to explain; and once more we may note that
they are not the work of small minds or trivial natures, however
badly they have been echoed. Substitution implies at any rate some
serious confession of guilt before God, some strong sense of a great
indebtedness to Christ. The theory of Sacrifice implies the need of
reunion with God. Robertson Smith, in his "Early Religion of the
Semites" brings out that the essence of ancient sacrifice was that
the tribe, the sacrificial beast and the god were all of one blood;
the god was supposed to be alienated; the sacrifice was offered by
the party to the quarrel who was seeking reconciliation, namely, the
tribe. When we look at the New Testament, we find that the emphasis
always lies on God seeking reconciliation with man (cf. 2 Cor.
5:19). The theory of ransom--a most moving term in a world of
slavery--implies the need of new freedom for the mind, for the heart
and the whole nature, from the tyranny of sin. All these are
similes; and tremendous structures of theory have been built on
every one of them--and for some of these structures, simile, or, in
plainer language, analogy, is not a sufficient foundation. It is
probably true that all our current explanations of the work of
Christ in Redemption have in them too large an element of metaphor
and simile. Yet Christian people are reluctant to discard any one of
them; and their reluctance is intelligible. There is a value in the
old association, which is found by new experience. Every one of
these old similes will contribute to our realization of the work of
Christ, in so far as it is a record of experience of Christ,
verified in one generation after another. We shall make the best use
of them, when we are no longer