1: Reprinted by permission from "Doctrine and Deed,"
Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.]

_Christ died for our sins_.--1 Cor. xv., 3.

I want to think with you this morning about the doctrine of the
Atonement. Having used that word atonement once, I now wish to drop
it. It is not a New Testament word, and is apt to lead one into
confusion. You will not find it in your New Testament at all,
providing you use the Revised Version. It is found in the King James
Version only once, and that is in the fifth chapter of Paul's letter
to the Romans; but a few years ago, when the revisers went to work,
they rubbed out the word and would allow it no place whatever in
the entire New Testament. They substituted for it a better
word--reconciliation--and that is the word that will probably be used
in the future theology of the Church. It is my purpose, then, this
morning, to think with you about the doctrine of the reconciliation,
or, to put it in a way that will be intelligible to all the boys and
girls, I want to think with you about the "making up" between God and
man.

Christianity is distinctly a religion of redemption. Its fundamental
purpose is to recover men from the guilt and power of sin. All of
its history and its teachings must be studied in the light of that
dominating purpose. We are told sometimes that Jesus was a great
teacher, and so He was, but the apostles never gloried in that fact.
We are constantly reminded that He was a great reformer, and so He
was, but Peter and John and Paul seemed to be altogether unconscious
of that fact. It is asserted that He was a great philanthropist, a man
intensely interested in the bodies and the homes of men, and so of
course He was, but the New Testament does not seem to care for that.
It has often been declared that He was a great martyr, a man who laid
down His life in devotion to the truth, and so He was and so He did,
but the Bible never looks at Him from that standpoint or regards
Him in that light. It refuses to enroll Him among the teachers or
reformers or philanthropists or the martyrs of our race. According
to the apostolic writers, Jesus is the world's Redeemer, He was
manifested to take away sin. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. The vast and awful fact that broke the apostles'
hearts and sent them out into the world to baptize the nations into
His name, was the fact which Paul was all the time asserting, "He died
for our sins."