that in his death the whole
meaning of his life was gathered. We may say that his death was the
consummation of his life, that without it his life would not have been
what it is. This is, however, very far from being the ordinary statement
of the relation of Jesus' death, either to his own life or to the
forgiveness of our sins.

The doctrinal tradition made much also of the deliverance from
punishment which follows after the forgiveness of sin. In fact, in many
forms of the dogma, it has been the escape from punishment which was
chiefly had in mind. Along with the forensic notion of salvation we
largely or wholly discard the notion of punishment. We retain only the
sense that the consequence of continuing in sin is to become more
sinful. God himself is powerless to prevent that. Punishment is
immanent, vital, necessary. The penalty is gradually taken away if the
sin itself is taken away--not otherwise. It returns with the sin, it
continues in the sin, it is inseparable from the sin. Punishment is no
longer the right word. Reward is not the true description of that
growing better which is the consequence of being good. Reward or
punishment as _quid pro quo_, as arbitrary assignments, as external
equivalents, do not so much as belong to the world of ideas in which we
move. For this view the idea that God laid upon Jesus penalties due to
us, fades into thin air. Jesus could by no possibility have met the
punishment of sin, except he himself had been a sinner. Then he must
have met the punishment of his own sin and not that of others. That
portion which one may gladly bear of the consequences of another's sin
may rightfully be called by almost any other name. It cannot be called
punishment since punishment is immanent. Even eternal death is not a
judicial assignment for our obstinate sinfulness. Eternal death is the
obstinate sinfulness, and the sinfulness the death.

It must be evident that reconciliation can have, in this scheme, no
meaning save that man's being reconciled to God. Jesus reveals a God who
has no need to be reconciled to us. The alienation is not on the side of
God. That, being alienated from God, man may imagine that God is hostile
to him, is only the working of a familiar law of the human mind. The
fiction of an angry God is the most awful survival among us of primitive
paganism. That which Jesus by his revelation of God brought to pass was
a true 'at-one-ment,' a causing of God and man to be at one aga