ffered as one disowned and reprobated
and forsaken of God.' Dwight considers that he endured God's 'hatred and
contempt.' Bishop Jeune tells us that 'after man had done his worst,
worse remained for Christ to bear. He had fallen into his father's
hands.' Archbishop Thomson preaches that 'the clouds of God's wrath
gathered thick over the whole human race: they discharged themselves on
Jesus only.' He 'becomes a curse for us and a vessel of wrath.' Liddon
echoes the same sentiment: 'The apostles teach that mankind are slaves,
and that Christ on the cross is paying their ransom. Christ crucified is
voluntarily devoted and accursed'; he even speaks of 'the precise amount
of ignominy and pain needed for the redemption,' and says that the
'divine victim' paid more than was absolutely necessary."[215]

These are the views against which the learned and deeply religious Dr.
McLeod Campbell wrote his well-known work, _On the Atonement_, a volume
containing many true and beautiful thoughts; F. D. Maurice and many
other Christian men have also striven to lift from Christianity the
burden of a doctrine so destructive of all true ideas as to the
relations between God and man.

None the less, as we look backwards over the effects produced by this
doctrine, we find that belief in it, even in its legal--and to us crude
exoteric--form, is connected with some of the very highest developments
of Christian conduct, and that some of the noblest examples of Christian
manhood and womanhood have drawn from it their strength, their
inspiration, and their comfort. It would be unjust not to recognise this
fact. And whenever we come upon a fact that seems to us startling and
incongruous, we do well to pause upon that fact, and to endeavour to
understand it. For if this doctrine contained nothing more than is seen
in it by its assailants inside and outside the churches, if it were in
its true meaning as repellent to the conscience and the intellect as it
is found to be by many thoughtful Christians, then it could not possibly
have exercised over the minds and hearts of men a compelling
fascination, nor could it have been the root of heroic self-surrenders,
of touching and pathetic examples of self-sacrifice in the service of
man. Something more there must be in it than lies on the surface, some
hidden kernel of life which has nourished those who have drawn from it
their inspiration. In studying it as one of the Lesser Mysteries we
shall find the hi