intimidated by the terminology, but
go at once to what is meant--to the facts.

We come still closer to the facts in the less metaphorical terms of
the New Testament. For example, there is the New Covenant. The
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews went back to a great phrase in
Jeremiah, and by his emphasis on it he helped to give its name to
the whole New Testament--"I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel and the house of Judah" (Heb. 8:8-12; Jer. 31:31-34).
Using this passage, he brings out that there is a new relation, a
new union, between God and man in Jesus. He speaks of Jesus as a
mediator bringing man and God together (Heb. 8:6)--language far
plainer to us than the terminology of sacrifice, which he employed
rather to bring home the work of Jesus with feeling and passion to
those who had no other vocabulary, than to impose upon Christian
thinkers a scheme of things which he clearly saw to be exhausted.
Then there is Paul's great conception of Reconciliation (2 Cor.
5:18-20). Half the difficulties connected with the word "Atonement"
disappear, when we grasp that the word in Greek means primarily
reconciliation. As Paul uses the noun and the verb, it is very plain
what he means--God is in Christ trying to reconcile the world to
himself. These attempts to express Christ's work in plain words take
us back to the great central Christian experience--to the great
initial discovery that the discord of man's making between God and
man has been removed by God's overtures in Christ; that the
obstacles which man has felt to his approach to God--in the unclean
hands and the unclean lips--have been taken away; and that with a
heart, such as the human heart is, a man may yet come to God in
Jesus, because of Jesus, through Jesus.

The historical character of Christian life and thought is surely
evidence that Jesus Christ has accomplished something real; and when
we get a better hold of that, the problem of his person should be
more within our reach. The splendid phrase of Paul--"Therefore being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ" (Rom. 5:1)--or that of 1 Peter: "In whom ye rejoice ... with
joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet. 1:8)--gives us the
keynote. The gaiety of the Early Church in its union with Jesus
Christ rings through the New Testament and the Christian fathers
from Hermas to Augustine. The Church has come singing down the
ages.[36] The victory over sin--no e