and
their God[21].'

Still Christ's sacrifice of propitiation, to which we contribute
nothing, in which we do not share, remains a necessary prelude to the
establishment of the new life. It is in virtue of this that we are
justified and accepted and allowed to start afresh. This fact the New
Testament in general takes for granted, and offers no explanation of
it; as indeed the human heart has in general accepted the benefit in
all thankfulness and asked no questions. But the speculative modern
intellect has found a difficulty in the matter--in the matter at least
as commonly represented--and we have noticed that a suggestion of
explanation is made by St. Paul in this passage. God had long gone on
'passing over' sin all over the world in loving forbearance, bearing
with all men's sinfulness, {149} till they had thoroughly learnt the
lesson of their own need of God and inability to save themselves. But
this very forbearance rendered God's character liable to complete
misunderstanding. He might have been supposed to be kind indeed, but
indifferent to sin. 'These things hast thou done and I kept silence:
thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself[22].'
Thus the severity manifested in the claim of the 'righteous Father'
upon the Son of Man, His claim of an obedience unto the shedding of His
blood, and the ready response to His claim on the part of the Son of
Man gladly rendering up His life in homage to the Father--these taken
together, the claim of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son,
vindicated within the area of the Christian faith the true character of
God, and forced the believer in Jesus to hold the severity and the love
in their inseparable unity as making up the divine righteousness.

Does not this thought open at least an intelligible vista into the
mystery of the Atonement? Christ is the Son of Man. He is to
inaugurate the true manhood. But first He must deal with the manhood
that has gone {150} astray, and make an act of reparation to the Father
for all the outrage that our sins have done Him. Thus in contrast to
all our self-pleasing, self-indulgence, self-excusing, in contrast to
all our clamorous insolence towards God and indifference to His laws,
we behold the Son of Man recognizing the Father's strict requirements,
and lifting before His eyes, in the name of the manhood which He
represents, the great reparation of an unshrinking obedience and
loyalty unto death. The Father