:42. So important is this fact of the new
motive power and its effectiveness, that the reader's attention will
now be directed to the words of James Denny in "The Death of Christ"
on this subject. That the reader may the better appreciate these
words, his attention is first called to the estimates of Denny's great
work by two of the leading religious editors of the world. The
_Pittsburg Christian Advocate_: "To thoughtful students 'The Death of
Christ' came as one of the most stirring books of the decade if not of
the generation." The _New York Examiner_: "The most important
contribution to the all-important doctrine of the atonement since the
appearance of Dr. Dale's epoch-making book.... Exegetically
considered, it is the most important book published within the memory
of the younger generation of preachers." On the death of Christ for
our sins (1 Cor. 15:3) being the motive power in the Christian life,
and its being effective, Denny says: "The problem before us is to
discover what it is in the death of Christ which gives it its power to
generate such experience, to exercise on human hearts the constraining
influence of which the apostle speaks; and this is precisely what we
discover, in the inferential clause; 'so then all died.' This clause
puts as plainly as it can be put the idea that His death was
equivalent to the death of all; in other words, it was the death of
all men which was died by Him."... "Their relation to God is not
determined now _in the very least by sin or law_: it is determined by
Christ, the propitiation, and by faith. The position of the believer
is not that of one trembling at the judgment seat, or of one for whom
everything remains somehow in a condition of suspense; it is that of
one who has the assurance of a Divine love which has gone deeper than
all his sins, and has taken on itself the _responsibility of them_,
and _the responsibility of delivering him from them_."... "Take away
the certainty of it and the New Testament temper expires. Joy in this
certainty is not presumption; on the contrary, it is joy in the Lord,
and such joy is the Christian's strength. It is the impulse and the
hope of sanctification; and to deprecate it, and the assurance from
which it springs, is no true evangelical humility, but a failure to
believe in the infinite goodness of God who in Christ removes our sins
from us as far as the east is from the west, and plants our life in
His eternal reconciling love."... "An