ain a clear idea as to what the Atonement really means and
always has meant to Christian experience, notwithstanding the tortuous
ways in which the doctrine has been articulated. I am convinced that
underneath every genuine attempt to explain the Atonement which has
ever held the field for any length of time in Christian history the
same truth is always to be found. It is so even with the statement of
it which is supposed to be orthodox to-day, but which is quite modern
after all, and is practically discredited by all thoughtful minds. The
mental dialect changes from one generation to another, but truth does
not. As a matter of fact, statements of truth are but conventional
symbols at the best, and possess only the ethical and emotional value
associated with them in our minds. This is why venerable propositions
which seem obscurantist to us originally possessed vital significance
to their framers; the ethical and emotional content were greater than
the form of statement, as they always must be. Every one of my readers
is no doubt aware of the power possessed by some particular landscape
or piece of music to awaken certain emotions in the heart or bring back
the memory of certain events to the mind. The same scene or song might
not do this for anyone else because the associations are different. It
is much the same with the forms in which religious truth is stated from
age to age. The form is no more the truth than the landscape is the
emotion or recollection it excites; it is only a symbol for the truth.
To grasp this clearly should not only make us more tolerant of archaic
confessions of faith, but should help us to realise that truth is one
even under apparently contradictory forms of statement. It is our duty
in religion as in everything else to endeavour to express the content
of spiritual experience in the forms which best accord with the mental
dialect of our own day. I repeat, therefore, that underneath every one
of the principal forms of statement in which the doctrine of Atonement
has been presented in the past the same truth is to be found. It is an
interesting historical and psychological study to try to find out what
it is.

+Atonement in the Old Testament.+--As I have already said above, it is
usual for writers on the Atonement to begin by taking scripture for
granted and presenting an examination of the principal passages in
which the Atonement is thought to be presumed or declared. But if what